Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the Dodd bill attempts to deal with quarterly liquidation. I know there have been discussions about the pros and cons. There have been attempts to deal with the derivatives title. My sense is, before it is all said and done, there is a chance that may work out well. I think we have overly dealt with consumer protection and hope that somehow in this body we will bring that back into balance. This bill glaringly does not deal with some of the core issues of this last crisis. We just voted on GSEs, an amendment that would have dealt with that over the next couple of years in a way that does not prescribe exactly a solution but makes sure we deal with it. We just voted it down. Even more glaring, the Dodd bill does not deal with the essence of what created this last crisis. At the base of this crisis--an inverted pyramid--was the fact that we had a lot of loans that were written that should never have been written. Those loans were done by companies that were leveraged 30, 40, 50 to 1, and then $600 trillion worth of notional value of these loans that should never have been written were spread across the world. That, in essence, brought down our financial system. It seems to me if we are going to do a financial regulation bill, we ought to at least deal with the core issue, which is very poor underwriting. I have offered an amendment. I know there is going to be a side-by-side.…”