I had come from a middle-class family in Port Washington, Long Island, and I was really clueless about Wall Street. My first job there I basically got fired from.

Wall Street has been beset with problems. The cycle of greed and personal aggrandizement and lifestyle grandstanding is an affront to any American.

The Fed has got to become a more democratic institution that is responsive to the needs of the middle class, not just Wall Street CEOs.

The vast majority of the people employed by Wall Street are the secretary who goes in to work on the Long Island Rail Road, who makes fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollars a year.

Twenty-nine years on Wall Street, and an Italian last name, not one trading violation... they can't find anything. Because I would never dishonor my dad by hurting my last name by doing something stupid for money or for power.

Wall Street has turned the economy into a giant asset-stripping scheme, one whose purpose is to suck the last bits of meat from the carcass of the middle class.