John Garamendi: “Well, now that's an interesting question. Clearly, we have institutions that are too big to fail. That's where the TARP…”

“Well, now that's an interesting question. Clearly, we have institutions that are too big to fail. That's where the TARP legislation that was the last act--one of the last acts of the Bush administration--came into being. The Treasury Secretary, Mr. Paulson, who actually was the CEO of Goldman Sachs, as I recall, came to this House, came to the Senate, and said, Oh, my. Oh my. The world is going to collapse unless you immediately cough up a trillion dollars to the banks to stabilize the banks. Fortunately, this House said, Wait a minute. Let's see what we're doing here. Instead of a 1-page bill giving the Treasury Department a trillion dollars, the TARP program was put in place. And it did stabilize the financial institutions but it was a clear sign that Wall Street banks had become too big. AIG. How much have they taken? Twenty-three billion dollars of our money. Are we going to get it back? We don't know.”