Political Quotes

“There is plenty of blame for the near collapse of the economy over the last 5 years--greedy, even criminal business behavior, lax or nonexistent oversight with regulators asleep at the switch. Clearly, there were some reckless consumers and a failed political system. But as instructive as the postmortem might be, it's more important to avoid a repeat performance. What should we do? I would suggest we simplify, regulate, and prosecute. Let's begin by reinstating the Glass-Steagall, Depression-era bank regulation that helped promote stability in that industry. It would be a small step in the right direction, a signal that the era of deregulation, unfettered, is at an end. I hope we can move to performance-based regulation. The Dodd-Frank bill had many important and valuable features, but I fear that it is at risk of becoming a bureaucratic nightmare. We do need to regulate. The cozy, light-touched, gentle--some would say diffident--approach that assumes that the gentle people in the financial industry will self-police must be a thing of the past. We should provide the various regulatory authorities with adequate staff and budget. We should pay them properly so that they aren't a training ground to be hired away for much higher salaries by the industry they're supposed to regulate. We should have high expectations that they will do their jobs, and then we should back them up and not undercut those efforts. Finally, we should prosecute.…”