Barney Frank: “sadly this bill reminds me of some comments we heard just a week or so ago from leading corporate executives who, having…”

“sadly this bill reminds me of some comments we heard just a week or so ago from leading corporate executives who, having signed an agreement in which it was clear that their companies had abused the trust of investors, tried by public statements to water that down, and I admire the vigor with which the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission Mr. Donaldson, who appears to be doing a good job, spoke out harshly against them. What he said was, look, we have got to acknowledge that we made, as a society, serious errors, and we have to be willing to make a whole-hearted effort to correct them, and essentially what we saw were chief executives of culpable corporations who were making it clear that whatever reforms they had agreed to came grudgingly and reluctantly. That is what this bill is. It is a grudging, reluctant acknowledgment that something had to be done, and it is an effort in the face of serious wrongdoing that took hard-earned money away from large numbers of people to do as little as people think they can get by with. This is a time for us to be forthcoming. This is a time for us to do an expansive piece of legislation protecting people. We are not dealing with speculative ills here. We are dealing with real harm that was done to real people.”