George H.W. Bush: “And after you get through talking to us, and I hope that we can help as an administration, save a little time to talk to…”

“And after you get through talking to us, and I hope that we can help as an administration, save a little time to talk to some of those who don't think we've got enough regulation on Congress and will hold up the name of a very good man for the OCC because they think he's been too lenient on regulation. And he gets stiffed in these Senate politics. Bob Smith knows this very well, indeed. We've got to sell the other side that you've got a point here, and you do have a point here. I don't want to sound like an expert, because I've been out of meeting a payroll for a long time. When I was in the drilling business, if I went into loan on a drilling rig, I had to have a contract from a major oil company or some good credit, or they wouldn't loan me a dime. They wouldn't loan unless I had that to pay it out. In the go-go years that followed, there got to be a lot of competition for loans for drilling platforms, and you didn't have to have a contract. And the lending institutions started making loans that they wouldn't have made in more normal times or more conservative times. In real estate, you had to have a contract to pay out x percent of your building, if not the entire building. And then in the go-go days, through the S&L's and some degree the banks trying to compete, understandably so, thinking there will be no tomorrow, and the consumer and the loaners thinking the same thing, they made loans that now are bad, shouldn't have made in the first place. We got carried away by the excesses. Now, I know that from personal experience, not from some textbook, not from listening to some handler in the campaign just discovering New Hampshire. So, we have been recovering from some of the excesses. It is my point that in some of this regulation we've gone too far, that we've swung too far back. And the lender is saying to himself, ``Wait a minute. I've been through all that once. Don't ask me to make the same mistake twice.'' A lot of what you're talking about is psychological between the lender and the borrower. But to the degree the Government is being inhibiting, not for sound economic reason but just kind of reaction to the excesses of the past, we can help, and we should help. And we should try to lighten up on the regulations, and I know Judd feels that way at the State level. So, I think something good can come of this, and we will set it up at whatever level you want.”