Political Quotes

“I join the chorus of Senators Grassley and Durbin about their proposal. Wall Street Profits Madam President, I want to talk about another issue. Today, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation--which is the agency that does such things as every quarter announcing bank profits and bank profitability--issued an assessment of the banking industry. Lo and behold, as a number of us have been saying on this floor week after week, month after month, year and year: It is a great time to be on Wall Street. Bank profits this second quarter of 2018--we announce it now--were $60 billion, with a b. That is 60,000 million dollars--$60 billion in bank profits. That number is fairly meaningless. It is a really big number. It is hard to grasp, but think about it this way. These bank profits this quarter were up 25 percent from 1 year ago, and it is typical of being able to compare quarter to quarter or year to year that way. What is fairly stunning about this is that this Congress can't do enough for the banks. First, it was a decade ago, when Congress bailed out the banks. Then, we see bank profits go up and up and up. Congress last year gave a huge tax cut. The financial services industry did better than the rest of the economy with this tax cut, and, interestingly, the big banks did better than the community banks with the tax cut in terms of percentage, per capita--and anyway you measure it--in the amount of money or in assets, whatever.…”