Financial regulatory reform is perhaps the most important legislation that the Congress will address for many years to come.
He is correct. It is far more important than all the other important issues we must resolve combined.
Speech from Senator Kaufman of Delaware:
Without drawing hard lines that reduce size and complexity, large financial institutions will continue to speculate confidently, knowing that they will eventually be funded by the taxpayer if necessary…
And what response do I hear when I raise this rather obvious question? That we have moved beyond the old frameworks, that the eggs are too scrambled, that the financial industry has become too sophisticated and modernized and that it was not this or that piece of deregulation that caused the crisis in the first place.
Mind you, this is a financial crisis that necessitated a $2.5 trillion bailout. And that amount includes neither the many trillions of dollars more that were committed as guarantees for toxic debt nor the de facto bailout that banks received through the Federal Reserve’s easing of monetary policy.