The American Awakening

Floor Speech

Three years ago, after a decade of deregulation, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which was the deregulation of derivatives, Wall Street--the ``job creators''--gambled our economy into oblivion, but they never paid the price.

Remember George Bush and Hank Paulson, who was the Secretary of the Treasury? Well, he was kind of a stand-in, because, actually, he was the former chairman of Goldman Sachs, pretending to be Secretary of the Treasury. He took care of his buddies on Wall Street, but he was aided and abetted by none other than Tim Geithner, the chairman of the New York Fed. In fact, in one of the most outrageous moments of this whole scenario, Tim Geithner, now Secretary of the Treasury--although he wasn't chairman of Goldman Sachs, but it's probably in his future--decided to pay off the gamblers 100 cents on the dollar when the government had to do the biggest bailout in history of AIG. Now, that was incredible--100 cents on the dollar.

At the time, I proposed that, in fact, Wall Street should pay for its own bailout--that is, a tax on speculators and reinstituting a tax we had from 1916 to 1966 while we built the greatest industrial Nation on Earth. It didn't hurt investment in capitalism then. It wouldn't hurt it now. In fact, if we reined in some of the speculators, our real economy would be better off for it.

But now there's sort of been this amazing political jujitsu where somehow the Republicans, aided by the Koch Brothers, who have also subsidized the Tea Party, have changed the narrative. It was the government. It was overregulation. Overregulation? Oh, come on, guys. There were no rules. They gambled our economy into oblivion. You cannot pretend that this wasn't wild and reckless, but you've changed the narrative. You took over the House.

Now, this fall, something is happening. Something in this land is happening. I call it the American awakening--the occupation of Wall Street, which is now spreading to other cities across this country.

They make fun of these young people because they are not totally focused on what they want, but what's happened is their future has been stolen from them. I saw some Fox commentators yesterday morning making fun of them saying, Oh, do you think they got time off from work? Oh, well, they don't have jobs, do they?

No, they don't have jobs. What are we doing to create jobs and give these kids a future in this country and rein in the gamblers on Wall Street and restore the real economy, the productive economy of this country? Nothing. In fact, you want to go back to 2008. That was your dream.

It is time to begin to deal meaningfully with these problems in this country and that we have the greatest disparity of wealth in our history. Corporate profits are up; jobs are down. CEO pay up; jobs are down. Bonuses on Wall Street, whoa, six figures, up. Jobs, down.

It's time to rectify this, and I think the young people and the others who are joining them on Wall Street get it. They may not be totally focused, but they know that this isn't a country that gives them a fair shot at the American Dream anymore. It's a stacked deck, and it's time for a new deck and a new order.

Reregulate the reckless gamblers on Wall Street. Rein them in, take steps to rebuild our real economy, give people a future, invest in education, invest in the basics of this country, transportation, infrastructure; and we can be a great Nation again. But if we continue down this path, or even if they accelerate us down this path with helping the job creators destroy the economy again, there's no hope.

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