House Proceeding 03-18-09 on Mar 18th, 2009 :: 1:11:55 to 1:15:25
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1:11:53 to 1:12:14( Edit History Discussion )

John Yarmuth: so i just want to emphasize congress has a responsibility to act, and with that i'll yield back to my friend fr kentucky. mr. yarmuth: i thank my colleague. it was a fascinating hearing. something else that camep in that hearing was swreeging to me as well. one of our members early in the questioning period asked the two c.e.o.'s why the treasury department under secretary

1:11:55 to 1:15:25( Edit History Discussion )
Speech By: John Yarmuth

1:12:15 to 1:12:35( Edit History Discussion )

John Yarmuth: paulson had bail out a.i.g. and not lieman brothers and they both said -- behman brothers and they both said, we don't know, you'll have to ask the treasury department. when it got to my question i said, you know, i like to ask you a similar question or related question but maybe in a different fashion. what was the relationship

1:12:36 to 1:12:56( Edit History Discussion )

John Yarmuth: between a.i.g. and goldman sachs? question was because secretary paulson and many of the officials in treasury had come out of the goldman sachs operation. and they responded, as you will recall, goldman sachs was the counterparty with a.i.g. on $20 billion worth of credit default

1:12:57 to 1:13:17( Edit History Discussion )

John Yarmuth: swaps. and until the last few days a.i.g. had been unwilling to tell anyone who their counterparties had been, and they did reveal last week that a list of them and how much money they had been paid and goldman sachs had been paid $11 billion or $12 billion of this amount.

1:13:18 to 1:13:38( Edit History Discussion )

John Yarmuth: so what we saw was an incredible amount of incest with us dealings among these -- incestuous dealings among these companies that were creating wealth without creating value. creating wealth not for the american people but creating wealth for these few people, the

1:13:39 to 1:14:01( Edit History Discussion )

John Yarmuth: giants of wall street, the masters of the universe who got into an operation that they really didn't understand. and now we're all paying the price for that. and there's a fascinating article that's in the current issue of "harper's magazine" and it's by a lawyer out of chicago. and it talks about the -- what he perceives to be one of the

1:14:02 to 1:14:22( Edit History Discussion )

John Yarmuth: problems in our current economic situation and that it was over the last 20, 30 years we have put more and more emphasis on the financial services aspect of our country as opposed to the manufacturing facilities because -- and it all happened because

1:14:23 to 1:14:43( Edit History Discussion )

John Yarmuth: we stopped pasion attention to how much -- paying attention to how much money you can make in the banking business. we essentially did away with laws so banks could earn 25%, 30% on credit cards. and these exotic instruments where they could leverage their assets 30 and 40 times.

1:14:44 to 1:15:05( Edit History Discussion )

John Yarmuth: and because they were making these huge profit margins they drew cap manufacturing to the financial sector because there was no longer nearly the return available to capital in the manufacturing sector and it was all in the financial services sector. what we've seen as a result of that is, as has been mentioned

1:15:06 to 1:15:26( Edit History Discussion )

John Yarmuth: already today, the greatest disparity in wealth, between rich and everyone else in this country in its history. and also a basically an unsustainable and dangerous financial services sector. one that had got so big and created so little value that it jeopardized all of our society and our economy.