Political Quotes

“this is, in fact, an enormously important issue. The reality is that all over our country, hard-working, decent people have lost their jobs. They have lost homes, their savings. They have lost their ability to go to college. We are experiencing the highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression. All of this did not happen by accident. It happened because of the greed, the recklessness, and the illegal behavior of Wall Street, of CEOs there who converted our financial institutions into the largest gambling casino in the history of the world. One of the major functions of the Fed is to protect the safety and soundness of our financial institutions. There can be no debate, Mr. Bernanke, as Chairman of the Fed, failed at that important job, and this country and the world almost saw a major financial collapse, and we have seen in this country a horrendous recession. I think average American citizens have a hard time understanding how we reward failure, how we say to somebody who was asleep at the switch in terms of regulating our financial institutions: Congratulations. You failed. There is a major recession. You are getting reappointed. I do not think people understand why and how that should happen. Second of all, when we talk about the bailout, it is not just the $700 billion that went to TARP. There were trillions of dollars in zero-interest loans, or almost zero-interest loans, that went to major financial institutions.…”