Political Quotes

“Mr. President, this week we are considering a bill to roll back the rules on some of the biggest banks in the country. Over the course of this week, I am going to be spending a lot of time on the Senate floor talking about the problems with this bill and how it threatens working families and American taxpayers, but I want to start by looking back to 2008 and the reason we have these rules in the first place. Ten years ago next week, Americans started holding our breaths. For years, financial institutions had been riding high, selling dangerous products to consumers, and making risky bets. All the while, Washington looked the other way, cozying up to big banks, loosening rules left and right, and shrugging off rules they couldn't get rid of. And no wonder--the revolving door was spinning like crazy. Bank officials became regulators and then went back to the banks, getting richer and richer. Bank profits were sky high and getting higher. But business built on scams and hype can't grow forever. Ten years ago this month, Bear Stearns, an 85-year-old institution on Wall Street, went belly up because of $46 billion in scam mortgages and other questionable investments on its books. The failure gave the rest of the world a glimpse of Wall Street's addiction to risky bets. The disease spread. It turned out that a lot of other banks had invested heavily in scam mortgages too. Investors panicked, sending the markets into a nosedive.…”