[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 111 (Tuesday, July 24, 2012)]
[House]
[Page H5134]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


    THE NEAR COLLAPSE OF THE ECONOMY: AVOIDING A REPEAT PERFORMANCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. There is plenty of blame for the near collapse of the 
economy over the last 5 years--greedy, even criminal business behavior, 
lax or nonexistent oversight with regulators asleep at the switch. 
Clearly, there were some reckless consumers and a failed political 
system. But as instructive as the postmortem might be, it's more 
important to avoid a repeat performance.
  What should we do? I would suggest we simplify, regulate, and 
prosecute.
  Let's begin by reinstating the Glass-Steagall, Depression-era bank 
regulation that helped promote stability in that industry. It would be 
a small step in the right direction, a signal that the era of 
deregulation, unfettered, is at an end. I hope we can move to 
performance-based regulation. The Dodd-Frank bill had many important 
and valuable features, but I fear that it is at risk of becoming a 
bureaucratic nightmare.
  We do need to regulate. The cozy, light-touched, gentle--some would 
say diffident--approach that assumes that the gentle people in the 
financial industry will self-police must be a thing of the past. We 
should provide the various regulatory authorities with adequate staff 
and budget. We should pay them properly so that they aren't a training 
ground to be hired away for much higher salaries by the industry 
they're supposed to regulate. We should have high expectations that 
they will do their jobs, and then we should back them up and not 
undercut those efforts.
  Finally, we should prosecute. Sending people to jail will send a 
message. All of the people in American prisons collectively have not 
stolen as much with guns as the American public, our pension funds, our 
businesses lost in the near meltdown of the economy. Every time 
somebody illegally profits from a financial transaction, somebody else 
loses. Crooks, whatever the color of their collars, should be held 
accountable.
  To make this happen, the public needs to focus some of their 
frustration to make this an issue in the election. At a time when 
politicians and special interests are making strange and outrageous 
noises, here is a real issue for them to address.

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