[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 22971]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      PRESIDENT OBAMA'S SPEECH TO WALL STREET AND THE G-20 SUMMIT

  (Mr. FORTENBERRY asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. FORTENBERRY. Mr. Speaker, in his recent speech before Wall 
Street, President Obama was right to demand more responsibility from 
the American financial industrial complex. One year and $16 trillion of 
taxpayer liability at risk later, the American people are still 
shouldering the burden of the reckless behavior of the companies deemed 
``too big to fail.''
  I am troubled, however, Mr. Speaker, by the presupposition espoused 
by international leaders during last week's G-20 summit that greater 
global consolidation of our financial systems is in our national or in 
the international community's best interest. Mr. Speaker, it is the 
global scale of the crisis of credit and confidence that should give us 
pause to consider that our profound economic connectedness might 
actually intensify our problems.
  Local businesses and local financiers best know the needs of their 
communities and, in their very essence, are more transparent and 
accountable. Rather than risk becoming more intertwined in an 
internationalist financial industrial model, we should focus instead on 
encouraging the formation of strong local economies, which are the 
proper models for us to build economic strength in America as well as 
for the world's developing nations. This should be Wall Street's and 
the President's guiding principle. They owe it to the American people.

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