Jan. 15 Democratic debate transcript

Sen. Clinton:  Brian, I'm very concerned about this. You know, about a month and a half or so ago I raised this concern, because these are called sovereign wealth funds. They are huge pools of money, largely because of oil and economic growth in Asia. And these funds are controlled often by governmental entities or individuals who are closely connected to the governments in these countries.

I think we've got to know more about them. They need to be more transparent. We need to have a lot more control over what they do and how they do it. I'd like to see the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund begin to impose these rules, and I want the United States Congress and the Federal Reserve Board to ask these tough questions.

But let's look at how we got here.
We got here because, as I said on Wall Street on December 5th, a lot of our big financial institutions, you know, made these bets on these subprime mortgages. They helped to create this meltdown that is happening, that is costing millions of people who live in homes that are being foreclosed on or could be in the very near future because the interest rates are going up.

And what they did was to take all these subprime mortgages and conventional mortgages, bundle them up and sell them overseas to big investors. So, we're getting the worst of both worlds.

We can't figure out, under this administration, what we should do. I have a plan: a moratorium on foreclosures for 90 days, freezing interest rates for five years, which I think we should do immediately.

The administration is doing very little. And what we now see is our financial institutions having to go hat in hand to borrow money from these foreign funds. I'm very concerned about it.

I'd like to see us move much more aggressively, both to deal with the immediate problem with the mortgages and to deal with these sovereign wealth funds.

Williams: Senator Edwards, I neglected to point out that one of the companies keeping these giant American banks afloat is Kuwait, a nation, an economy arguably afloat itself today, as you know, thanks to the blood, sweat and tears of American soldiers.

What would you do as a remedy?

Former Sen. Edwards:  Well, the things that Senator Clinton just spoke about are correct. We need more transparency. We need to know what's actually happening. But the fundamental problem is what's happening at the core of the American economy. What's happening to the economy in America, if you look at it from distance, is we have economic growth in America -- we still do -- but almost the entirety of that economic growth is with the very wealthiest Americans and the biggest multinational corporations.

You ask any middle class family in America and they will tell you they do not feel financially secure. They are worried about their job. They are worried paying for health care. They're worried about having to send their kids to college. They're worried about, in so many cases, here in Nevada particularly, worried about their home being foreclosed on.

I spoke a few minutes ago about thousands of people coming to Nevada everyday to try to find the promise of America, to try to find a good job, a good home to meet the great moral test that all of us have as Americans, which is to make certain that our children have a better life than we had.

This is the great challenge that we're facing in this election. We talked about other historic moments. It is an historic moment for America in this election.

Are we going to do what our parents and our grandparents did, who worked and struggled and suffered to ensure that we would have a better life?

They have now passed that torch to us and it is our responsibility, and it will be my responsibility as president to ensure that our children and our grandchildren have a better life than we had.

Williams: Tim?
Oh, Senator Obama, a rebuttal.