Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am going to speak for a few moments about the amendment I just referenced, amendment No. 4109, which was filed and to which there has now been an objection. As I have indicated to my colleague, objections run both ways. I could sit here and object as well to most things that are going to go on here, if we have a gatekeeper or several gatekeepers who decide that two amendments that would get a little tougher on Wall Street are amendments they don't want to vote on; if they don't want to countenance an amendment that would tighten the strings just a little bit. Let me speak about what this amendment is because it sounds like a foreign language, ``naked credit default swaps.'' ``Credit default swaps'' by itself sounds like a foreign language. The reason is they haven't been around all that long. This is an exotic financial instrument that was created to allow certain things to happen on Wall Street between banks and big hedge funds and so on. If we have not yet at this point understood the danger of this unbelievable orgy of speculation in credit default swaps--and especially what are called naked credit default swaps--then I guess we are destined to never fully understand what happened, and that is fine. Maybe some people don't want to know what happened. A naked credit default swap is pretty simple. Someone out there needs some money, so they issue bonds. Someone else buys the bonds. Now they hold the bonds and the person who issued them has the money.…”