Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the Cardin-Grassley amendment extends whistleblower protections to employees of nationally recognized statistical rating organizations, NRSROs. NRSROs are the companies-- such as Moody's and Standard & Poor's--which issue credit ratings that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission permits other financial firms to use for certain regulatory purposes. There are 10 NRSROs at present, including some privately held firms. The NRSROs played a large role--by overestimating the safety of residential mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations--in creating the housing bubble and making it bigger. Then, by marking tardy but massive simultaneous downgrades of these securities, they contributed to the collapse of the subprime secondary market and the ``fire sale'' of assets, exacerbating the financial crisis. In the wake of the Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco corporate scandals, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in July of 2002. One of the provisions in the act was extended whistleblower protections to employees of any company that is registered under the SEC Act of 1934 or that is required to file reports under section 15(d) of the same act. The whistleblower provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act protect employees of the publicly traded companies from retaliation by giving victims of such treatment a cause of action which can be brought in Federal court.…”