This was the answer by the President that by rights should blow Romney right out of contention.
Transcript of the first presidential debate between President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney
MR. LEHRER: You want to repeal Dodd-Frank?
MR. ROMNEY: Well, I would repeal it and replace it. You — we're not going to get rid of all regulation. You have to have regulation. And there's some parts of Dodd-Frank that make all the sense in the world. You need transparency, you need to have leverage limits for institute a specific — let's — excuse me —
MR. ROMNEY: Let me mention the other one. Let's talk the —
MR. LEHRER: No, no, let's do — right now, let's not. Let's let him respond.
MR. ROMNEY: OK.
MR. LEHRER: Let's let him respond to this specific on Dodd-Frank and what the governor just said.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I think this is a great example. The reason we have been in such a enormous economic crisis was prompted by reckless behavior across the board. Now, it wasn't just on Wall Street. You had — loan officers were — they were giving loans and mortgages that really shouldn't have been given, because they're — the folks didn't qualify. You had people who were borrowing money to buy a house that they couldn't afford. You had credit agencies that were stamping these as A-1 (ph) great investments when they weren't. But you also had banks making money hand-over-fist, churning out products that the bankers themselves didn't even understand in order to make big profits, but knowing that it made the entire system vulnerable.
This is the best brief encapsulation I've seen of what led up to the 2008 Financial Crisis that sent not just the American economy but the whole world's economy into a tailspin that we'er still trying to climb back from. President Obama made it clear what put us into our present economic predicament easily comprehensible. Understandable to the vast bulk of Americans and not just nerds who follow this stuff like me.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: So what did we do? We stepped in and had the toughest reforms on Wall Street since the 1930s. We said you've got — banks, you've got to raise your capital requirements. You can't engage in some of this risky behavior that is putting Main Street at risk. We're going to make sure that you've got to have a living will, so — so we can know how you're going to wind things down if you make a bad bet so we don't have other taxpayer bailouts.
In the meantime, by the way, we also made sure that all the help that we provided those banks was paid back, every single dime, with interest.
Now, Governor Romney has said he wants to repeal Dodd-Frank, and, you know, I appreciate, and it appears we've got some agreement that a marketplace to work has to have some regulation, but in the past, Governor Romney has said he just wants to repeal Dodd-Frank, roll it back. And so the question is does anybody out there think that the big problem we had is that there was too much oversight and regulation of Wall Street? Because if you do, then Governor Romney is your candidate. But that's not what I believe.
The president presented Romney's intention to repeal Dodd Frank as a reckless dismissal of the very painful object lesson our country has learned over the last 4 years: That lax regulation and enforcement by regulators who were ideologically opposed to regulating financial markets were two key ingredients in recipe for the 2008 economic catastrophe. Two of the bad things a President Romney would usher back in.