Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this is, in fact, an enormously important issue. The reality is that all over our country, hard-working, decent people have lost their jobs. They have lost homes, their savings. They have lost their ability to go to college. We are experiencing the highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression. All of this did not happen by accident. It happened because of the greed, the recklessness, and the illegal behavior of Wall Street, of CEOs there who converted our financial institutions into the largest gambling casino in the history of the world.
One of the major functions of the Fed is to protect the safety and soundness of our financial institutions. There can be no debate, Mr. Bernanke, as Chairman of the Fed, failed at that important job, and this country and the world almost saw a major financial collapse, and we have seen in this country a horrendous recession.
I think average American citizens have a hard time understanding how we reward failure, how we say to somebody who was asleep at the switch in terms of regulating our financial institutions: Congratulations. You failed. There is a major recession. You are getting reappointed. I do not think people understand why and how that should happen.
Second of all, when we talk about the bailout, it is not just the $700 billion that went to TARP. There were trillions of dollars in zero-interest loans, or almost zero-interest loans, that went to major financial institutions. It is incomprehensible to me the Chairman of the Fed can lend out trillions of dollars, and when I asked him: Who got the money? He said: Sorry, the American people don't have a right to know that--in so many words. I am not telling you.
How can you have confidence in the leadership of the Fed when there is virtually no transparency--trillions of dollars being lent out, and we do not know who received it? That is not acceptable to me. We need a Fed Chairman who believes in transparency, who is going to tell the American people who has received those loans.
We are also today, importantly, not just talking about the past. We are talking about the future. We are talking about how we pull this country out of a recession in which 17 percent of our people are unemployed or underemployed. The fact is, the Fed today has the capability, the power to take significant action to protect the middle class and working families of this country. I say to the Presiding Officer, I do not know about Illinois, but I will tell you, in Vermont I get calls every week.
People are saying: Why did you help bail out these large banks, and now they are charging me 25, 30 percent interest rates on my credit card?
Mr. Bernanke and the Fed have the power today to lower interest rates on credit cards. I want a Fed Chairman who is going to do that. Last night we heard from President Obama, who appropriately pointed out very serious problems that small businesses all over this country are having in terms of getting the low-interest loans they need in order to create the kind of jobs our economy desperately requires. The Chairman of the Fed today has the power to provide low-interest loans to small- and medium-sized businesses.
It is not just large financial institutions that can receive zero-interest or low-interest loans. I know it is a great shock to the Fed, but small- and medium-sized businesses--in a productive economy that creates real jobs--can also receive those loans. I want a Fed Chairman who will provide those loans.
It is hard to believe the largest financial institutions in this country that we bailed out because they were too big to fail--do you know what. Three out of four of them are even bigger today. It is time to break up those financial institutions that are too big to fail. If they are too big to fail, they are too big to exist.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, we need a new direction on Wall Street. We need a new Fed Chairman.
Thank you very much.
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