"American peasants have got to be the stupidest people in the world today"

Max: "It's not froth, it's fraud. This is an incredible case of accounting fraud and the American peasants have got to be the stupidest people in the world today: they don't mind becoming peasants, they don't mind living like peasants, and if that's the case, we should do nothing to stop them from sliding into a peasant class."

Barney Frank has proposed legislation on financial derivatives that essentially exempts what are called over-the-counter derivatives from most regulation, and it is over-the-counter derivatives that have been a major cause of this crisis. So that’s utterly insane. There’s no conceivable justification for it. And he stacked the hearing. There were nine witnesses; eight of them were from the industry and, of course, testified that they were vital to the world. The ninth witness was the only person who was in the least bit skeptical, and he was promptly gaveled down, unlike the others, by the chair. So it’s not only a farce; they’re willing to have us see that it’s a farce. They are so little afraid of public opinion and outrage that they’re not even taking steps to cover up the cover-up. - William Black, Former bank regulator at the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation.