Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens (republican)

"I've not been convicted yet"

"There's not a black mark by my name yet, until the appeal is over and I am finally convicted, if that happens"

New York State Governor David Paterson (democrat)

"States have already reprogrammed and reprioritized to a point where there is simply nothing left in the budget for the current fiscal year"

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown

"As economic activity rises, as tax revenues recover, then you would want borrowing to be a lower share of our national income. But the responsible course at the moment is to use the investments that are necessary, and to continue them, and to help people through very difficult times"

Former Fed Chief Allen Greenspan (the oracle)

"Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief"

"The consequent surge in global demand for U.S. subprime securities by banks, hedge and pension funds supported by unrealistically positive rating designations by credit agencies was, in my judgment, the core of the problem"

Former Standard & Poor's Residential Mortgage Ratings Director Frank Raiter

"by 2001 the stress for profits, and the desire to keep expenses low prevented us from, in fact, developing and implementing the appropriate methodology to keep track of the new products. As a result, we didn't have the data going forward in 2004 & 5, to really track what was happening with the sub-prime products and some of the new alternative payment type products, and we did not, therefore, have the ability to forecast when they started to go awry."

Former Moody's Credit Policy Director Jerome Fons

"regulators must drop restrictions on unsolicited ratings"

"the analysts that I interacted with took their responsibility seriously and demonstrated high moral character"

Representative Tom Davis (republican)

"this is too important to allow usual partisan politics to play a role, and i think this is our financial 9/11"