the financial reform bill. a bill that is looking tough on transparency and derivatives but as you know by now misses the boat or in this case the cruise ship on too big to fail. not to mention the conflict of interest that is the regulators ratings agencies and so-called cops and police who work night and day to accommodate the desires of the crooks. democrats today pushing to open floor debate. republicans saying they don t want to be rushed. it s only been two years since the financial meltdown. and the same rules are still in place. take a listen. for far too long, too many on wall street have been on failure. they have made billions betting on the housing market collapsing or other failures in the economic system. we ll see this afternoon whether enough republicans on capitol hill are determined to bet on failure also. i hope not. a vote says we re done listening to the american people
you want federal guarantees, then what you do must be good for the economy which means lending, mortgages, capital to businesses, you want to play in a casino, you go with your own money. no leverage. no risk. we ll size you down so that you do not put us at risk in this too big to fail risk and reward which is what we live with. denying them the ability to have their cake and eat it, too. precisely. if you were to look at the resistance to that, the primary resistance is what? the primary resistance is frankly members of congress who think they can get away putting in place some superficial reform. is it better on derivatives? as you said, they missed the cruise ship, battle ship sitting there, too big to fail structure that brings all of these pieces together that perpetuates something that will fail down the road and be more expensive next time it happens. what is your assessment political pundit for a second,
i m thinking about goldman sa ms where they pick bonds and underwritings and say i believe they won t be worth this much going forward, let s semisell t for a lot now and buy insurance on them. what s the merit to derivatives used in secret in that form? we have to bring transparency to the whole marketplace. they shouldn t be in secret. and we have to lower the cost and the risk to american public. the public should not stand behind these institutions. they shouldn t bail out these institutions. that s why we are for strong regulation of what s called derivatives between dealers and end users and transparency. you and i both know that if a sound financial reform bill comes forward with transparency and with capital requirements to resurrect lending and separate
lawsuit. exactly what benefit do these types of derivatives provide in the form of lending and investment in our country other than adding $28 billion in trading revenue to the banks books while they trade with wide spreads and secret. why give these people money to do that? here are three typical arguments you ll hear. one, the need to ensure the price of food or energy. think about that. food crops being protected against a natural disaster or in the case of an orange grove in florida, an unexpected freeze. they swapped the risk of the value of those oranges with a speculator and as a result don t have risk. also, think about reducing price volatility for imported goods from summer to winter, from spring to fall. think car parts from europe or asia that can be consistently priced over a period of years as a result of some of these types of derivatives and then there is
open bet between two parties that unfortunately amount to a huge percentage of the actual derivatives you see in that 600 trillion. we know how that worked out. it allowed goldman sachs to place multimillion dollar bets if you don t pay us down uncle sam will take down your economy or take down your pension. that s a nasty debt to pay off a gambler. if we buy into this, what could possibly be a legitimate reason for trading those contracts in secret? why do we let big banks bet on such a huge scale in secret that we have to step in when they lose at the casino. why does the orange grower not go to a public exchange and buy that derivative or go to lloyds of london.