Political Quotes

“I rise to speak in opposition to the Chambliss substitute amendment and to ask my colleagues to think about this substitute in a significant way because it dramatically changes the underlying bill. In fact, I almost want to ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle if they are serious--if they are serious that this is the proposal they are going to put before us in response to the catastrophe that we have seen on Wall Street. I know we have been on the Senate floor and we have had a lot of history with this, starting in 2001. I think it must have been 2002 or 2003 when we tried to regulate derivatives after the Enron crisis, and one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said: We can't regulate derivatives; we don't know enough about them. What lessons have we learned since this catastrophe? I can tell you this: We were wrong to say we can't understand derivatives because our misunderstanding or not paying attention has led us to the catastrophe we are in today. For the other side of the aisle to say we can't even propose exchange trading, that is like saying the stock market should make changes in options and stock without being on an exchange.”