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Mr. Alpert said that the federal government made an error in 1999 by revising the Glass-Steagall legislation of the 1930s.
He said the revisions allowed commercial banks, for example, to become involved in "high-risk equities."
Former U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) said during a recent appearance in New Milford that those policies led to some financial institutions becoming overleveraged by a 40-to-1 ratio.
"You have to regulate these banks," Mr. Alpert said regarding Democratic President Barack Obama's call during a recent fund-raiser in Stamford for Mr. Dodd for higher standards.
Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele (R-Stamford) has said that Stamford ranks fourth in the world in financial services.
The Associated Press has reported that the president supports U.S. House legislation "that would give the government unprecedented power to seize bank holding companies and other large financial companies and other large financial firms teetering on the brink of collapse and stick their competitors with the cost."
Mr. Dodd, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, has been well ahead of Mr. Alpert in polls taken over the recent months by Quinnipiac University of Hamden. However, the senator has a higher disapproval rating than approval rating among the voters that have been polled and Mr. Alpert has said he believes that factor, among others, will catapult him to victory in a primary next August.
Mr. Dodd has been criticized over the last year and a half of not reacting sooner to the financial services crisis, which resulted in a $700 billion economic rescue package that former Republican President George W. Bush signed in October of last year.
Although a Senate committee cleared him of wrongdoing, there has been concern among voters that he received favorable treatment for two mortgages on his homes.
There are five candidates seeking the Republican nomination: former Ambassador Tom Foley of Greenwich, state Sen. Sam Caligiuri of Waterbury, businessman Linda McMahon of Greenwich, former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons of Stonington and investor Peter Schiff of Weston.
Mr. Alpert said he started to consider writing his memoir about six and a half years ago, about the time that his first of three children, Jaxon, was born.
He and his wife, Alex, met while working on Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign.
Growing up in a single-parent household in Colchester, he earned a bachelor's degree from Trinity College in Hartford and a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., served in a peace-keeping force in Bosnia and worked as a campaign aide for former Vice President Gore in 1992 and again during his presidential run in 2000.
He said that he kept a journal while he was serving in Bosnia and felt that, in part, a memoir would have a "motivational element" to show people that they can overcome obstacles.
Mr. Alpert first met Mr. Gore while he was an undergraduate a Trinity more than 20 years ago and said that over time the public has been more accepting of the former vice president's initiatives.
"He was committed to the environment at a time when he was mocked for that," he said regarding the vice president's commitment to global warming, which in recent years helped him win a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award. "There were times 20 years ago when he was yelled at by people over his beliefs," Mr. Alpert said.
Since launching his campaign this spring, he has touted his business experience. Mr. Alpert's book stated that in 2007 he and his partner sold Turbine Generator Maintenance for $16 million.
He said Mr. Dodd, as is the case with many members of Congress, has never owned and operated a company.
The senator served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic after graduating from Providence College in Rhode Island in 1966 and later graduated from law school and briefly worked as an attorney before being elected to the U.S. House in 1974.
"When you try to talk to a lot of people in Congress about how to create jobs, they scurry away," Mr. Alpert said. "They don't even know the language, much less the substance."
Regarding the economy, he said that he is concerned that the federal budget deficit was at a record $1.4 trillion for the fiscal year that ended in September and that it is projected to grow in the coming years under Mr. Obama.
"I think that both parties have made bad decisions," he said of the change in the federal budgets, which were generating surpluses a decade ago under then-Democratic President Bill Clinton. "We are burdening the next generation with an unbelievable amount of debt," Mr. Alpert said. "The problem is that we reduced taxes on the rich during the good times," he said, making reference to the $1.35 trillion tax cut that Mr. W. Bush signed in 2001.
"America has never thought of itself as having a limited pie," Mr. Alpert said. "But we're going to have to begin to think that way," he said regarding the constraints that might be imposed as a result of the economic crisis.
