Date: 2013-10-30
Speaker: DAVID SCOTT (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Georgia

Mr. Speaker. in closing. we have before us perhaps the most single important bill facing the viability. the financial security. and the stability of the financial system within the United States and throughout the world. We are dealing here with a $712 trillion piece of the world economy. Now. my friends who are in opposition to this certainly have some legitimate points. There is no question about that. We had a meltdown. Banks and members on Wall Street did wrongdoing. but this isnt the bill with which to punish them for doing that wrongdoing. We punish them for wrongdoing by working with the regulators and by putting. in fact. in motion not just civil penalties and not just financial penalties but criminal action. but we do that in another place. at another time. We have already approached that with the CFTCto use criminal actions if any of these kinds of shenanigans happen again. We are here to make sure that our banking system and that our economy. which have to work on the world stage. have not a disadvantage. If you push out these commodity swaps or the security swaps. we are doing a great disservice not just to the banks but to our end users. Take commodities. When you look at them. Mr. Speaker. commodities are things like aluminum. They are agribusiness products. In 40 out of our 50 States. the largest part of their economies is agribusiness. Let us take something like CocaCola. The CocaCola Company has to deal with aluminum for cansor Pepsi Cola or any of those in our beverage industry. They have to mitigate their risks. If you push them out of where they have to do their business in the same banks with interest rate swapsby the way. the interest rate swaps are the critical pivot swap to mitigate that risk. You are going to push commodities out. You are going to push the farmers out. You are going to push all the manufacturers. the automobile industry. All of these people that use commodities will not be able to do business in that same bank where the interest rates are. where the currency fluctuation rates are. When you have that. you are putting us at a great disadvantage. This is why Chairman Bernanke said that this is a problem. This adds to the systemic risk when you push out these individual commodities into another area. It creates uncertainty. The other thing that it does: it puts our banking system at a huge disadvantage competitively because these foreign banks. they are not pushing their swaps out. and that means that the United States banking system could see a migration of swap activities out in the world. We are the leader of the world. We have got to act like that. That is what H.R. 992 will do. It will be that force that will help our banking system be the true leader in this world and not at a disadvantage. With great respect to those in opposition to this. it is written into law in section 716 that no taxpayer money can be used for bailouts. You talk about the FDIC. You cannot use that because that is the banks money that they put up to ensure deposits. None of that goes into swaps. Certainly we cant use proprietary trading. The Volcker Rule settles that where they cannot make any kind of money or make profit on the deposits of ordinary citizens. Nowhere is there any taxpayer liability. This is a good bill. I urge everybody in this House of Representatives to realize our economic security is at stake and lets pass H.R. 992. I yield back the balance of my time.