So what we’re interested in doing is to work with companies to get advice: Are there ways that we can streamline and make this more effective? Are there ways that we can lessen the burden on small and medium-sized companies, but still retain the basic principle that accounting standards have to be met, and they have to be cleared, they have to be understandable -- you can’t cook the books -- and that CEOs and boards of directors have to be accountable for the accounting statements that they put out there? And they’ve got to sign a bottom line. And they’re going to be directly liable if, for some reason, it turns out that there were some shenanigans going on there.
So this raises a broader question about regulation. We went through a period of time where I think the general theory was the less regulation, the better. And if you talk to most companies, they’d rather not have any regulations whatsoever. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s just the nature of it. You figure companies think they’re pretty smart, they know what they’re doing. And I’m sure if I talk to Bob, he’d say, there are a whole bunch of things that I’ve got to do that I wish I didn’t have to do.
But it’s like any other law. You put the laws in place, even though you know most folks are following the rules and operating decently and commonsense, to make sure that those folks who aren’t operating that way can’t wreak havoc on the system.
And so we’re going to be having a big debate when it comes to financial regulatory reform. You’re seeing the same pattern come up right now. You essentially had a whole bunch of financial institutions -- investment banks like Lehman Brothers -- who were taking one dollar and they were able to leverage, essentially bet that -- use that dollar to make a $60 bet on sub-prime loans in housing and take huge, exorbitant risks that almost brought the entire system to heel. And all your friends and neighbors and communities are paying the price, because nobody was minding the store and making sure that these banks and these financial institutions were following basic rules of the road.
So what we’ve now said is, look, we’ve got to have a financial system that works. That’s how credit flows. That’s how businesses finance themselves. But we’ve got to have some basic rules to make sure that we never find ourselves in a situation again where we’ve got two choices -- either you bail out the banks, in which case you’re thinking, why am I propping up these folks who caused the problems in the first place; or you don’t but then these banks start failing and the whole system breaks down, creating what could have been a Great Depression.
We can’t allow ourselves to be put in that position again. So we’ve got to have some basic rules, some basic regulations, at the front end that say to banks, we’re not going to let you get too big to fail. We’re not going to put ourselves in a position where somehow you’re able to gamble with other people’s money in such a way that it can potentially bring down the whole system.
Getting the balance right, how to do that, is something that you’ve got to be very careful about. But I think now that we’ve got -- we’re starting to see a framework emerge both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, where my hope is, is that we can actually get this sometime in the next several weeks.
Thank you for the great question. This gentleman right here.
Q Thank you, sir. My name is Michael Shore (ph). I’m here in Charlotte. First, it’s an honor to have you here with us today.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much.
Q I’m concerned that your decision to allow offshore drilling could have the effect of chilling investment into alternate sources of energy. And I’m interested in what incentives you’re going to be proposing to establish the conditions and to stimulate research and development and expansion of that critical sector.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that’s a great question. Look, first of all, understand that the Recovery Act, what we passed last year, represented the single largest investment in clean energy in history, by far. So we invested in wind; we invested in solar; we invested in biomass. We invested in research and development; we invested in commercialization. We invested in battery technologies. We are interested in figuring out how we can improve efficiency across the system, both in buildings and in transportation sectors and -- you name it, we’re all about increasing energy efficiency and finding new renewable, clean sources of energy. It’s one of my highest priorities, and I think it’s got to be one of our highest strategic priorities as an economy. It has the potential of being an enormous growth industry.
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