derivatives trading and make it more transparent. it received just one republican vote in committee, but an important one. chuck grassley of iowa. those rules on derivatives will get folded into the banking bill. in an interview with cnbc s john harwood, president obama said stronger financial regulations would be good for everyone, including, especially for wall street itself. we have gotten into one of those places where we need to update those rules of the road. and if we do so, not only is that good for the economy, not only does it protect consumers and investors, it s also good for the financial sector. because it will rebuild trust, and people will have confidence that when they re dealing with banks, when they re dealing with these institutions, that they, in fact, are playing it straight, above board, and they re competing on the basis of who s providing the best services and the best products as opposed to who s got the most
for all banks in the country. that s still very big, but it does put some limits around how big these banks can be, and the risks they can pose to the system. we re i think that when you look at this, we ve got to make sure that these banks don t continue to threaten the economic system and the financial system, and if they get too big, they can. it s pretty simple. as the bill moves to the floor, do you expect it to move more in your direction, or possibly now more in a republican direction, if republicans are coming on board with the bill? well, no, i think they continue to move and improving this bill, improving it for consumers, for investors. i had a dozen manufacturers, small company manufacturers in ohio visit me today. they re concerned about this banking system, and they want to see more credit flowing, and they know we need to change the way wall street does business. and that tells me, when i saw senator grassley, who s up for
creative accounting rules or who s able to concoct the wildest derivatives that may serve no economic function whatsoever. wall street firms have been hiring big guns to lobby on capitol hill. goldman sachs just brought on former white house counsel greg craig to help fight those civil fraud charges. and the former democratic leader in the house, kick gephardt is now a lobbyist for goldman sachs. right here on msnbc, andrea mitchell asked chris dodd of the banking committee if lawmakers-turned-lobbyists were cause for concern. i think have you a two-year ban before you can actually come back and lobby the congress on these matters. if you ve been a former member of congress. so it s better than it was in the past. but clearly there may be steps that will be taken to improve it, the situation, so you don t have the opportunity to have an insider kind of access and
to get there. but understand, the question is not liberal, conservative, centrist, middle of the road, move to the center. the question is whose side are you on? whether it s on health care or whether it s on this bill, or whether it s something down the road, it s whose side are you on. that s a pretty easy call for a whole lot of republicans, too, that they don t want to be tagged as being on the side of wall street. so once we get that issue across, and message across, and we talk that way, we act that way, and we legislate that way, you re going to see a lot more republicans, i think, voting with us. senator brown, thanks for finding the time to join us tonight. glad to. thank you, lawrence. for more on the politics, let s turn to chris hayes. our wall street reform bill that looks likely to have substantial republican support, that s richard shelby talking, we have
midterms, which is that the president everything the president touches is horrible and he s a foreign socialist who s going to take away your guns. if they re voting with him on this bill, they re presumably going to be at the signing ceremony. that s going to complicate the political message they want to drive home in the midterms. senator dodd addressed this issue of lobbying and democrat heavy weights lining up on the sides of goldman sachs, dick gephardt, greg craig. how hard is this for democrats and what does it mean for the culture of washington you can so quickly and easily move from one side to the other and it s just this constant churning back and forth? it means the culture of washington is totally and completely corrupt and that the country is ruled, and i know this sounds radical, but true, by a very intense financial oligarchy that basically has purchase on both parties. i don t want to downplay the import of the ad committee and financial regulation, some of which