eventually housing there. the crisis occurred and i tried to get loans to save myself from loss because things started to turn down. i couldn't sell any of my houses and things went bad. i went to jamie dimon's bank and tried to get loans and was unable to. and i lost everything, i literally wound up homeless. and he basically called people like myself who were told previously and do the right thing and built up to a certain level and i was big enough to fail and that was wound up

homeless and banks to the people and. >> dan, you know, you've hit all of the key things and the sad part is and you were too small and billions and millions in this country and many have failed and are in dire economic circumstances and banks and ceos that billions of dollars in bonuses and you ask yourself how much you pay back and not only have you paid back one red cent, paid themselves and wall street

pays by different rules, favorable treatment, and everybody else in america gets treated differently and that needs to end. and we've already got and it's the audacity and all mortgages and all the loans and credit cards, gosh goalie, aren't they a great company and aren't we a great company because of them? well, the answer is no. they are not really a bank. they are a trading vehicle. they mostly trade for themselves and these activities. if they were a bank doing what a bank is supposed to do, he wouldn't be testifying and wouldn't be a loss and a crisis created for wall street in '08.

you're exactly right. i hope things get better for you. there's a lot of people in america in the same circumstances. hang in there. it's a great country. but, you know, another study came out recently and maybe you'll find this interesting. one of the biggest costs of the crisis in our view of better markets is that the surveys now show that increasingly americans don't believe the american dream works for them anymore. they do not see opportunity, prosperity, and the chance to get ahead. as you said, there's plenty of people who try to pull themselves up by their boot straps and they are being thrown a big cement block around their neck and that's the bill everybody is paying for wall street. and, again, i don't want to keep saying this but that's why we need financial reform. that's why we need politicians of both parties to enforce the law and that's why we need the regulators to get strong financial reform in place and this country can't afford to have wall street do it to you, roy, or to the rest of america again.

it has to stop. it needs to stop now. the politicians and the regulators need to hear from you, roy, and everybody else in this country because and all you hear all name long is jamie dimon and the spinners and all day long, call roy and tell everyone you know to call him, call capitol hill, call the white house, call the regulators, tell him to put financial reform in place now and protect this country. >> our guest, dennis, is president and ceo of better markets. he spent time on capitol hill working for senator dorgan, senator kennedy of massachusetts. and spent four years as a crash and firefighter and medic. here's joe tweeting in. he says, this narrative sounds neat and tidy but there's zero evidence. what deregulation?

there was no deregulation. so take us through deregulation. >> is that joe? >> yes. >> joe, if that were only the case, frankly, it's objectively true, that the financial industry was both massively regulated after the great depression and during the great depression and that they would deregulate it in the '80s and '90s and we named a law called the financial -- commodities modernization act and it happened in 1999, and it essentially deregulated all derivatives which is is why today we have a 700 trillion and zero transparency and zero regulation because of a law and in 1999 there was a filing and

one of the most important roles and it separated and we had and everybody thinks of the banking where banks and small businesses to people like they did trading and investments and banks and not the bank part and the law and that's why one of the reasons that they are making loans, having credit cards and they are trading and people can

argue about the effects of deregulation and this is not owned by a party. this was a bipartisan activity and it goes to the power it just wants to buy the favors that it wants and activity because they did regulate the industry and that deregulation and our financial system after the great depression since 1999 and 200 and took years for the mississippi, welcome. >> caller: he said, son, they

can lend to a they have. if america would get back on that track,. >> you learned at a young age. >> it's interesting, the truth is, the world has evolved. the economy has ree volume ved and banks are very important. there's no question. we need healthy, strong sound, safe people have jobs and roy who called in earlier and i

don't think we can go back to that day. it's certainly the case that we need much more regulation and it reminds me if you have a 3-year-old or a 5-year-old and one way to say, do what you want and don't take too much candy and that's not good for you and walk around the street and go shoching in a store next door and see how that works out. and it's not going to be able to prevent himself from stuffing his pockets and i'm just saying, the banking industry sits at the folcrom on our economy and depending on which way it goes, it's the only industry anywhere.

it's so big and so interconnected. there's no other industry in the world where if it goes off the tracks and goes wrong, that it could cause a second great depression and now their incentives and they get and have a good time and that's the infrastructure right now, they get the upside, we get the downside. that's why they need to be regulated. just like you wouldn't leave a 5-year-old alone in a candy store saying, now, remember, don't overeat. you cannot leave the financial industry and it's a phrase, could i be gone, you be gone.

and when they are talking about a trade where the person on the other end of the trade referred to off its muppets and they will have cashed in and sitting on the beach and in their big house, big yacht, big bank account and everybody else as we saw in '08 gets the bill and 40% of their net worth in three years. it's very close to a second great depression in many respects and to prevent that we have to regulate them. >> the dodd frank law was signed almost two years ago now by

obama and financial protection bureau and also the volcker rule prevents a few things more important done in recent history than passing financial reform. unfortunately, frankly it's an information campaign. and the last thing anybody would like to say, i'm sorry, for years you've made billions of dollars in bonuses but from now on you'll only make hundreds and millions in bonus. for most people they'd be happy with that. on wall street that view that as a crushing blow. they cannot possibly live on hundreds and hundreds and millions of dollars. they need the billion and

massive and think about it, it two decades and that's what regulation is. it's either a regulation to protect the american people from wilding on wall street. what the law did, the law was essentially putting back in place the protections that the industry had taken down. the industry's activities are complex. so you need a law that's not only comprehensive because what we do know is if you only regulate one part, then the risky activity moves to another part and the system and taxpayers are still threatened. so you have to have a comprehensive bill. the other thing you need to do is you need to have layers of protection. there's no silver bullet single solution that is going to protect the economy or taxpayers. what we've learned from after the great depression is layers of protection.

a whole bunch of other laws were put in place and that froeprote the country for seven decades. what the financial reform did was deal with both comprehensively with the industry and put in place layers of protection so that if one doesn't work or one has an unintended consequence or just the revolution of banking so that it's no longer applicable, nonetheless, the american people will be protected because there are other layers. so the law is very important and it needs to be enforced. the problem is, wall street was in congress to either kill the law when they couldn't kill it. they loaded it up with loopholes, made it ambiguous and most importantly they got congress to kick many of the decisions to the regulatory agencies. so wall street, even though they quote, unquote, lost in congress because the bill was passed, it gets kicked to the regulatory agencies and now they are in the

regulatory agencies fighting tooth and nail to weaken the rules to enforce the law. which, again, as they say, it's unfortunate because if we don't have comprehensive financial reform, if we don't have layers of protection, i fear and i think there's a good case to be made that the next financial crisis is going to make the last financial crisis look like a walk in the park. >> let's get a few more questions and comments in for dennis kelleher. keith is in florida. >> caller: hello. >> go ahead. >> caller: hello? >> keith, you're on the air. >> caller: hello? >> guess keith can't hear us. we'll move on to atlanta, georgia. sam, can you hear us? sam, good morning. okay. we'll try another person are you with us? >> we're thrilled.

>> caller: from the offset mr. kelleher said he was not a lobbyist. he said he was working for the public interest and that's why he wasn't a lobbyist. the question is, where are you receiving your funding? we don't lobby. the lobbying is a particularly defined term in the law. our funding comes from a hedge fund manager in atlanta who got involved in the legislative process in '08 in connection with the oil price run-up. i don't know if you remember early '08. but the oil prices went up to the highest at $148 a barrel. and gas prices were going up way over $4 a gallon. and at that point he got involved because he saw, again from atlanta and not wall street, what wall street was doing in the commodity markets. so he got involved in actually

testifying in congress, wrote some white papers, did some research. the financial crisis hit and he became involved in financial reform, hired a couple guys out of his own pocket to help him testify and advocate for the public in financial reform now, for most of us, i didn't know him. he had three kids and a job in atlanta where he needed to be running around on an ad hoc basis. he looked to contribute to financing that promotes the financial market and to his surprise, as he will say, he didn't find one because there wasn't one in existence at the time, which he thought was just wrong. he found somebody to run it and i left the senate in september

and we now have ten staff, located in washington, d.c., and fighting against wall street trying to roll back these reforms. i do want to say, however, better markets cannot do this alone and we need allies and supporters and we have plenty. there are other organizations, the consumer federation of america, public citizen, the unions there asked me, americans for financial reform, a whole variety of other organizations that are also engaged in the debate trying to protect the public. that's how better markets came about and how they are funded currently. we expect more broadbase funding over time once we become better known. >> let's get one last call in here. bob, a democrat, from new york. hi. >> caller: hi. >> hi, bob. >> caller: dennis, love the

overview on wall street. it's been enlightening. >> thank you. >> caller: my question is, on the news this morning it said that wall street has contributed $30 million to romney and 4 some billion to obama. that means that obama must be doing something right and makes me very leary to even think about being a republican when everything you've stated, they gave that much money to him. they must be trying to do something. and i thank you. >> well, bob, it is true that one of the biggest problems is a campaign finance system that, frankly, has just become a disconnected with reality and has caused a gross political distortion in the process. there's on organization called united republic that is trying to fight that.

i would encourage you and others to go online. they are trying to fix the campaign finance system. however, your main point is dead on. the problem is that they buy power, wall street and others buy essentially purchase power and they are indifferent to parties. however, if you look at the weighting, they have contributed to this cycle in particular, this election cycle, they are putting their money behind a political party rather than the other one. also, an interesting report shows exactly how influence is done in washington. it's called the big bank takeover. how too big to fail has captured washington and i think unnortherly detail the state of affairs how wall street and you have to very carefully listen to the politicians and i would

encourage you, bob, and others to do that. it is true that money is floating to both parties but disproportionately to one party. >> wall street ditches obama, backs romney from a couple of weeks ago and talks about how depocketed the financeers. >> i think that speaks volumes. when jamie dimon talks today, don't listen to what he's saying. watch what his lobbyists and lawyers are doing. don't listen to what any of these people say. look where they are putting their money. one thing wall street knows how to do is invest the money. they invest in politicians and look for a return and that return is to protect wall street's profits, not taxpayer pockets. so pay attention to what they do, not what they say. and if you do that, you will figure out who the right person to support in the coming election is. coming up this afternoon on

c-span 3, live coverage of remarks from tim geithner. the secretary's expected to talk about the recovery efforts and preview the g-20 in mexico where world leaders will discuss the europe debt crisis. live at 4:30 eastern here on c-span 3. earlier this morning jpmorgan's ceo jamie dimon apologized for his company's multibillion trading loss, also saying that it should be put in perspective. while shareholders lost money, no client taxpayer money was impacted by this incident. regulators are working on language known as the volcker rule, which would limit trading by banks for their own accounts. the regulations, which are part of the 2010 dodd-frank financial reform law don't go into effect until july of this year.

>> jamie dimon is a crook. this guy should be going to prison. him and 18 others. you need to listen to bernie sanders. these guys sit on federal forums. they take billions of dollars in u.s. taxpayer bailouts that at zero interest. this man is a crook and needs to go to jail and these are not the

job creators. they are the job destroyers. we need to bring the money back to the people. we need to start getting money to help people stay in their homes. this man is a crook. on behalf of chairman johnson, i'd like to call the meeting to order and then sus spent until the chairman has arrived and would ask the capitol police to restore order. thank you. >> 18 other billions stealing zero interest loans from people when the small businesses can't get the same loans.

when the people are deprived loans to get. >> the chairman -- the hearing has been called to order. we are suspending until the capitol police restore order. this is a hearing which we will ask people to cooperate so that we can conduct an inquiry into this matter. thank you.

>> you stole my house from underneath me. face the people that you foreclosed on. >> >> stop foreclosures now! stop foreclosure's now! stop foreclosures now! stop foreclosures now! stop foreclosures now!

we'll come to order. i ask the capitol police to please remove anyone who is interrupting the hearing. before we proceed, i remind that any interruption of the hearing will not be permitted and you will be escort