[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 190 (Tuesday, December 15, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H14951-H14952]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    TARP AND THE WALL STREET BANKERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, this week President Obama held yet another 
White House meeting to jawbone Wall Street bankers.
  Just a few months ago, in September, he traveled to New York to speak 
with them. Most of them didn't even have the courtesy to show up at 
Federal Hall. Then last week his Treasury Secretary called again on 
Wall Street's big banks to work out mortgage loans for the over 6 
million Americans who have fallen into foreclosure since 2007. Wall 
Street didn't do it. They're just laughing all the way to the bank. 
They'll pocket over $140 billion in bonuses this year for themselves.
  Yesterday, the President vowed to recover every last dime of taxpayer 
money that was bestowed on these giants, which now control 40 percent 
of deposits in our country. Five banks, 40 percent of the deposits. But 
you know it's important to ask the President which taxpayer money is he 
talking about. Just the TARP money? That would be about half a trillion 
dollars. But that figure does not include the hundreds and hundreds of 
billions of dollars doled out by the Federal Reserve, which is not a 
Federal agency, right to the big banks.
  What about all the damage those giants continue to do to our mortgage 
markets and property values despite what they've been given? How do we 
get all that money back? The big banks aren't doing mortgage workouts 
of any significance despite the President, despite his Secretary of the 
Treasury, despite those bills that Congress passed. Surely you've 
noticed the big banks tiptoeing through those mortgage tulips all over 
the country quite adeptly.
  What about all the smaller banks they've driven out of business? Do 
those investors get the same deal as Wall Street?
  What about the community bond ratings that have dropped across our 
country? How do we get that money back for our communities?
  What about all the Americans who have lost pensions and 401(k) plans? 
How do they get their money back?
  What about all the unemployment? What about the cost of that and food 
stamps and health care for those who have been hit hard by the economy 
Wall Street brought us? How do they get their money back?
  The President is looking through too narrow a keyhole. What the White 
House advisers fail to admit is that their approach isn't working. The 
TARP should never have been passed by Congress. It protected the 
wrongdoers, and now the Treasury Secretary just extended it for another 
year.
  TARP turns the banking system into a political chessboard by putting 
the Department of the Treasury into the driver's seat picking winners 
and losers, rather than using the independent financial regulatory 
agencies, as has always been done throughout our country. If you've got 
the wrong regulators, replace them, but be independent about it.
  So the entire credit system of our country remains frozen up as TARP 
and Wall Street have sucked dry the confidence of prudent banks in our 
credit system. Meanwhile, the value of your home is dropping. Inflation 
is rearing its ugly head, today announced a 1.8 percent inflation 
increase, double what it was anticipated and the biggest increase in a 
year. And why wouldn't it rise, as the fundamentals are all out of 
whack?

                              {time}  1815

  When TARP passed, the Bush administration said it would save America 
from depression, but then the Dow fell over 2,000 points from October 1 
to March 9 of this year. Our Nation fell into a depression anyway, and 
now 27 million Americans are either out of work or are working part-
time jobs when they want full-time jobs. The trouble is, when you don't 
fix something right in the first place, the problem only worsens. Here 
is what should have happened instead of TARP.
  In order to not bankrupt our country, the SEC should have reimposed 
regulations on short-sellers, and it should have suspended mark-to-
market accounting using fair value. The FDIC should have declared a 
financial emergency and proclaimed all depositors and creditors of 
banks protected if those banks failed, and it should have used its 
emergency power to restore capital in banks. That wasn't done in time. 
Even now, we need to separate prudent banking from speculation, and we 
need to restore and to strengthen normal banking regulation, and not 
depend on the overly politicized Treasury Department to pick winners 
and losers.
  Yes, we have to increase capital reserve and liquidity requirements 
to eliminate pro-cyclical rules, and we have to strengthen the SEC and 
increase congressional oversight with the Financial Accounting 
Standards Board while strengthening the FDIC.
  I have some other bills, including recouping the over $140 billion in 
bonuses that Wall Street will take this year. I have another bill to 
authorize the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the SEC to be fully 
funded, with investigators to uncover and prosecute the white collar 
criminals responsible for this fraud. I have another bill to reform the 
Federal Reserve system and to give each region in the country an equal 
voice so that the New York Fed doesn't overwhelm the rest of the 
country.
  Madam Speaker, America needs more than rhetorical flourishes from 
this administration or from the last to restore sanity to our financial 
markets. It is time to take the political manipulation out of banking 
regulation in our country.

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