United States Senator Lisa Murkowski

Financial Regulatory Reform

Senator Murkowski believes that the financial regulatory reform legislation must give regulators tools to prevent companies from engaging in the type of risky behavior that brought down AIG and led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. And when a company does fail, the expectation must be that losses are borne by its creditors -- not the U.S. taxpayer. The era of bailouts and too-big-to-fail must end, and we need to demand a greater level of transparency in our financial markets. But we need to do it in a way that does not needlessly divert capital away from activities that lead to job creation or that strangles our community banks, credit unions and non-financial institutions with burdensome regulations.

Unfortunately, the bill that is currently being debated in the Senate has far reaching impacts that go way beyond Wall Street. The bill affects the extension of credit in the United States, meaning it could potentially affect every Alaskan who takes out a home or car loan and every small business looking for financing or start-up capital. It also has impacts on non-financial entities -- essentially any business that extends credit in more than four installment payments is potentially subject to regulation under the bill. During debate on the legislation, Senator Murkowski will work to improve the bill to ensure that Alaska institutions - institutions that did cause the financial crisis - do not get saddled with unnecessary regulations that will stifle economic growth and make it harder for Alaskans to access credit.

The 2008 credit crisis is a very unfortunate reminder of just how interconnected the global economy is and how dependent the health of our economy is on the flow of credit and capital. Over the last year and half we watched the tragic consequences of Wall Street's recklessness, which caused credit markets to dry up, and sent Main Street's economy into a tail spin. Senator Murkowski believes that we must make sure that this never happens again, but we must craft our response in such a way that institutions that had nothing to do with the crisis are not casualties of the endeavor.