By Simon Johnson
Senator Chris Dodd has good political antennae. He knows that his financial reform bill will come under severe pressure because it has a weak heart – the provisions that deal with “too big to fail” are simply “too weak to make any sense.”
Stung by the hard-hitting critique of Senator Ted Kaufman earlier on Friday and unsure exactly where an increasingly combative White House is heading on the broader strategy vis-à-vis banks, Mr. Dodd took to the Senate floor yesterday afternoon – actually immediately after Senator Kaufman – in an attempt to sustain the momentum behind his approach to “reform”.
Note the prominent and rather defensive mention of Delaware, Senator Kaufman’s state, in what Senator Dodd said (the wording here is from the verbatim recording, not the official transcript):
“A business, as I say respectfully, in Connecticut or Delaware or Colorado, a homeowner in those states shouldn’t have to pay the price because a handful of financial institutions got too greedy, too risky, they were unwilling to examine what they were doing or did, recognizing that the federal government would bail them out if they made a bad choice, which they did.”
Perhaps it was this picture that did it: Continue reading “Hard Pressed, Senator Dodd Gives Ground”
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