Marshall Sanford: “I would agree with much of what my colleague said just a moment ago. I think that innovation is, indeed, the gateway to…”

“I would agree with much of what my colleague said just a moment ago. I think that innovation is, indeed, the gateway to the future, but I would argue that great innovation has been led by the private sector, not by loan guarantees to major corporations. You think about Steve Jobs and his partner opening up that business in basically what amounted to the basement of a house. That is not what we are talking about here. I think some of the great innovations will come from small businesses that don't see this kind of financial advantage. Two, I would make the point that this is not about just helping American companies. One of the largest loans out there was to Mazda, which is not an American company. Ford is--that is one of the other big loans, but Mazda is not. I would put this in the larger classification of Reagan's words: The closest thing to eternal life is a government program. This is one of those government programs that has not proved successful, and I think it is important that we wean government programs. We prune them where they don't make sense. Forty percent is, in fact, the default rate. If you add up all the numbers, it amounts to 2 percent. But most people when they think of default and what the American Bankers Association would think of when they think of default is divided by the number of loans out there, what percent defaulted, and that number happens to be a real 40 percent, not 2 percent of the aggregate amount of the total loans out there.…”