Nonbank Financial Companies

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, for too long, too many firms on Wall Street have had free rein to profit at the expense of their own clients, to engage in the riskiest sorts of speculation, to prosper from their risky bets when they pan out, and to have the taxpayers cover the losses when they do not pan out. For too long, there has been no cop on the beat on Wall Street.

That must end, and we can end it today by passing the Dodd-Frank bill. The legislation before us will rebuild the firewall between the worst high-risk excesses of Wall Street and the jobs and homes and futures of ordinary Americans.

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, spent 18 months and held four hearings investigating the causes of the financial crisis. The bill Senator Dodd and so many others have crafted will do much to rein in the problems we identified in our four hearings and during our investigation, and I greatly appreciate the recognition of the role of our work on the subcommittee in Senator Dodd's remarks last night.

This bill will prevent mortgage lenders such as Washington Mutual, the subject of our first hearing, from making ``liar loans'' to borrowers who cannot repay, from paying their salespeople more for selling loans with higher interest rates, and from unloading all the risk from their reckless loans on to the rest of the financial system.

This bill will dissolve the Office of Thrift Supervision, which looked the other way despite abundant evidence of Washington Mutual's abuses, as our second hearing showed.

This bill will bring new oversight and accountability to credit rating agencies, which, as our third hearing showed, issued inaccurate ratings that misled investors. Those ratings were paid for by the very same companies that produced the products being rated, which is a clear conflict of interest.

The bill before us will rein in the abusive practices of investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, the subject of our fourth hearing. It will sharply limit their risky proprietary trading. It will stop the egregious conflicts of interest that result when these firms package and sell investment products, often containing junk they want to dispose of, and then make a bundle betting against those very same products.

Those who claim this bill fails to rein in Wall Street cannot explain the massive amounts of effort and money Wall Street has spent to defeat this bill. If Wall Street likes this bill, it sure has a funny way of showing it.

The evidence from our investigation and from so many other sources is clear: We must put an officer back on the beat on Wall Street so the jobs, homes, and futures of Americans are not again destroyed by excessive greed. I commend Senator Dodd and his staff and all those who have brought us to this historic moment. More than anything else, it is the power of Senator Dodd's arguments and the deep respect for him among the Members of this body that have brought us to the finish line.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I thank my dear friend from Connecticut. He has made such an extraordinary contribution, not just to this bill but to this Senate over the years. I cannot say enough about him, his extraordinary integrity and passion that he brings to these subjects.

Senator Merkley, on the proprietary trading language, of course, as the Senator from Connecticut has already recognized, is in the lead there and has been an absolutely great partner and leader on that.

But I want to especially thank the Senator from Connecticut for his passion and for his--and I was very serious about the respect with which the Senator is held in this body. Without it, without that feeling about the Senator, as well as the cause the Senator espouses with others, obviously, we would not be where we are today.

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