Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I appreciate the distinguished majority whip. I voted with him last week on the interchange fees on debit cards. I thought it was a good amendment. But I have to take issue. Don't generically accuse those of us in this body of stonewalling a bill or more or less being interested in looking out for Wall Street or anybody else. A little history lesson is due. First, what brought us into this recession was the subprime market, which the distinguished Senator mentioned, and the housing market. It happened because Members of this body and the body down the way, 13 years ago, began to direct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to include in their portfolios a portion of affordable housing loans which were the words for what became subprime loans. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae created the market that allowed Wall Street to go find capital and collect that capital, put a high premium on the capital, high interest rate, maybe 200 basis points over the going rate, but then make it a higher credit risk to lenders because that is the way credit works. What happened is, those loans became popular, and because of a government-sponsored entity that began the consumption of those loans, they proliferated. Those securities were sold around the world. When they collapsed, and we went all through that, it was a terrible collapse.…”