Political Quotes

“I appreciate my fellow subcommittee chairman who has written a great piece of legislation here. We all have been talking about Dodd-Frank creating this Financial Stability Oversight Council, or FSOC, which was charged with monitoring systemic risk in the U.S. financial sector and coordinating regulatory responses by its member agencies--a good goal, but an idea gone bad, unfortunately. FSOC designates these banking companies with over $50 billion in assets, they are automatically considered systemically important financial institutions, and the act subjects those institutions to enhanced regulatory standards. Here is the issue, Mr. Speaker: this is not about Wall Street banks. This is really affecting and hitting Main Street banks. The SIFI designation really is arbitrary, and it subjects these companies with those assets. Which, don't get me wrong, $50 billion is a lot of money. However, if you look at the totality of our financial institutions, it is actually quite small. It suddenly says that they are globally now systemically important that, if this particular bank or company went out of business, we could take down the whole economy. It is just ludicrous. The process that FSOC uses to designate these institutions is flawed in its current design and lacks the transparency and accountability that the American taxpayers deserve and, frankly, expect.…”