Here’s Better Market’s President and CEO, Dennis Kelleher’s, Opening Statement at the House hearing this morning on financial reform:
Let me begin by stating a fact: Wall Street is not a job creator. Wall Street is a job killer…. of historic proportions.
As we sit here today, our country and tens of millions of good, hard-working Americans are suffering through the worst economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s. That is a direct result of the Wall Street-created financial collapse of 2008, which was the worst financial crisis since the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
Tonight, many of our neighbors will sit at their dinner table, look their children in the eye, and worry about their future.
- 21 million Americans today can’t find full time work.
- 11 million are paying mortgages higher than the value of their homes.
- 5 million have had to move out of their homes due to foreclosures and millions more are packing up as we speak.
- The American family’s net worth has plummeted almost 40% in just three years, from 2007-2010, wiping out almost two decades of hard work & prosperity.
None of this happened because of the Dodd Frank financial reform law passed just two years ago. None of this has happened because of rules meant to implement the financial reform law, almost none of which have been put in place yet because of Wall Street’s lawyers and lobbyists blocking them. None of this happened because regulators – who are the Wall Street policeman – are trying to make Wall Street follow the law like everyone else in our country.
Read the full opening statement here
Read the full written testimony here
