Political Quotes

“Today I am introducing bipartisan legislation to address a matter that I explored as chairman of the Banking Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment. During a series of hearings, it became increasingly clear to me that in order to protect taxpayers and investors, we need tougher anti-fraud laws and better oversight of Wall Street. Some of these institutions that are ``too big to fail'' have also become ``too big to care.'' We need to end the cycle of misconduct where such institutions can look at the bottom line and see they can break the law, get caught, pay a nominal fine, and still profit. At a Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, oversight hearing I held in November 2011, I asked Robert Khuzami, director of the Division of Enforcement at the SEC, why a recently proposed settlement with Citigroup had been thrown out by a Federal judge in the Southern District of New York, who believed it to be egregiously low. Mr. Khuzami replied that the SEC's ability to assess penalties was actually limited by the statute. In follow-up questions, I directly asked if Congress should consider raising these limits, especially in cases involving repeated offenders. I subsequently received a letter from SEC Chairman Schapiro, and written answers from Mr. Khuzami, supporting the need to raise the limits and make other improvements to the SEC civil enforcement statute.…”