Political Quotes

“I rise in support of the confirmation of Mr. Bernanke to continue as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. I do so, acknowledging that he contributed to the crisis, but also recognizing that without his strong leadership the crisis might have become a conflagration. How did we get to the brink of financial collapse? I might say to some of my colleagues, they should look in the mirror because they, too, contributed to the forming of the bubble. How? An overly loose fiscal policy under the control of the Congress and the administration. The previous administration ran up massive deficits, doubled the debt. That is a loose fiscal policy. It was accompanied by a loose monetary policy after 9/11. After 9/11, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates very low, flooded the system with money, and the combination of an overly loose fiscal policy and an overly loose monetary policy created the seed bed for bubbles to form. Indeed they did. We didn't just have a housing bubble, we had an energy bubble--oil prices went to $100 a barrel. We had a commodity bubble--wheat went to more than $20 a bushel. These are examples and evidence of bubbles being formed. When you have an overly loose monetary policy and an overly loose fiscal policy, bubbles are going to form and ultimately bubbles burst. When they do, there is enormous economic wreckage. That is what has occurred here--all of it coupled with an era of deregulation.”