It is critical that the American people, and not just their financial institutions, be represented at the negotiating table.

All three [of my grandkids] earn money around the house, and all three spend their own money. Now I've noticed that when they have to spend their own money on birthday cards, they have decided that homemade cards are so much nicer.

The financial collapse of 2008 got its start with predatory mortgages, that weren’t sold by community banks and credit unions, they were sold by fly by night mortgage brokers who had almost zero federal oversight and then the big banks looked over, saw the profit potential and they wanted it bad. So they jumped in and sold millions of these terrible mortgages while the bank regulators just looked the other way.

When you talk about Social Security, it's not just enough to say, we're looking at you, this really matters. It's the fact that a million Americans think it matters. Oh, wait, it's 2 million Americans think it matters. No, it's 4 million Americans. It's 6 million, wait, it's 10 million, it's 50 million Americans who care about this. That's how we're going to make change.

I saw at a young age that one bad break can turn a family's financial life upside down. And it has affected everything in my life since then.

We're going to make sure that the people who run for office and get elected are the ones who are going to work for the American people.

The financial services industry has seemed to treat the crisis like a little rainfall - inconvenient, but no significant changes needed. The real question moving forward is how the industry will respond to Wall Street reform and growing public anger.