Political Quotes

“I will do what I can in 3 minutes. My good friend from New Hampshire, my colleague from across the Connecticut River, apparently does not have a problem with the fact that the largest financial institutions in this country that we bailed out because of their recklessness, greed, and illegal behavior have, since the bailout, become even larger. Three out of the four major financial institutions, all of which were bailed out, have become larger. No matter what anybody tells you, when one of these institutions is about to tip over and take a good part of the economy with them, despite the rhetoric today, people are going to be bailing them out, and they are going to lose millions of jobs if we don't. The reality is, we have a situation now where the top six banks in this country, despite what the Senator from New Hampshire has suggested, now have total assets in excess of 63 percent of GDP. We are talking over $7 trillion. When you have six institutions with 63 percent of total assets compared to GDP, I think we have a problem, and we have a problem for two reasons. No. 1, we have a problem in terms of taxpayer liability and the fact that we will, once again, have to bail these behemoths out. Secondly, as Teddy Roosevelt told us 100-plus years ago, it is time to break up these guys because they have incredible concentration of ownership over our entire economy.”