Political Quotes

“Mr. President, this amendment, about which I asked to instruct the conferees, passed by a voice vote, and I appreciate the acceptance of it by Senator Enzi and Senator Sanders during the vote 2 weeks ago. We know too big to fail is still with us. We know that it is really all about those megabanks that are over $500 billion in total assets. That is what my amendment speaks to. In the 6\1/2\ years since Wall Street pushed our economy to the brink of collapse, the biggest banks have gotten, as we know, bigger. Think about this statistic. Just 18 years ago, the 6 largest banks in the United States had assets equal to 18 percent of our Nation's gross domestic product. Today, the 6 largest banks have assets equal to 63 percent of our GDP, with an average of more than 5,000 legal entities operating in 57 countries. These institutions are not just massive, too big to fail in terms of size. They are risky and complex. In many ways they are too big to fail, they are too big to manage, as we have seen from the mistakes they have made, and they are too big in many ways to regulate. If a financial institution is too big to understand, then it is probably too complex to manage and too opaque to regulate. Dodd-Frank requires large banks to produce an annual living will explaining the bank's plan for its own rapid and orderly resolution through the bankruptcy process in the event of material financial distress or failure.…”