Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I appreciate the courtesy of my colleague from Connecticut. My colleague talks about unintended consequences. We already know the real consequences of what are called naked credit default swaps. That is all we are talking about with this amendment. My colleague started out by talking about normal hedging by a candy manufacturer with respect to the price of sugar. That is not what this is about at all, and I am not prepared to lose a debate in which I am not involved. That is not what this is about. This is about naked credit default swaps. My colleague says there is $25 trillion of notional value of credit default swaps. I have cited two sources--the best two of which I am aware--that says 80 percent of them--think of this--as much as 80 percent of them have no insurable interest. They are just flatout naked, just gambling, betting, not investing. This is not a case of unintended consequences. We know the real consequences. We have already lived it and experienced it and we ought to understand that we cannot accept it any longer. This bill allows us to decide what kind of financial system we want going forward. Do we want to leave here saying we want a financial system in which the big shots on Wall Street decide they want to trade $25 trillion worth of credit default swaps, 90 percent of them in the five biggest banks? If that is what they want to do and it is betting rather than investing, God bless them; let them do it. Who are we to tell them?…”