Political Quotes

“We finally found something we agree on again. This is becoming a habit. We want to keep Wall Street in its place. I wish the gentleman would help us with empowering the SEC to do so. Dodd-Frank does not designate any entity as ``too big to fail,'' as the Garrett amendment suggests. Instead, Dodd-Frank provides regulators with the tools to address the risks posed by large, complex, and interconnected financial institutions--both banks and nonbanks alike. This is crucial in addressing one of the main regulatory gaps we witnessed leading up to the 2008 crisis. Too many nonbanks were in the shadows, having had escaped critical regulation that could have prevented the crisis. For example, regulators have already designed AIG as a nonbank systemically important financial institution, a SIFI. Recall that the London arm of AIG's was speculating in derivative products, such as credit default swaps, leading up to the 2008 crisis. By the fall of 2007, AIG Financial Products had already begun a tailspin that helped spark the worst financial crisis in the U.S. since the Great Depression. By May 2009, various programs of support from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury amounted to more than $180 billion in bailouts to the company. Other nonbank broker dealers, like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, were at the center of the creation of toxic assets, which were central to the crisis and necessitated the need for a Wall Street bailout.…”