Barney Frank: “I want to repeat the central theme here: History is one of bailouts initiated by the prior administration. Some have…”

“I want to repeat the central theme here: History is one of bailouts initiated by the prior administration. Some have been supported by this Congress. Some have died by the administration on its own. This bill prevents that legally. The gentleman from Texas who just spoke referred to the AIG bailout by the Federal Reserve or the Federal Reserve's picking one company or another. The power that the Federal Reserve has had for over 75 years to do that is repealed in this bill. The Federal Reserve is allowed, if there are solvent institutions that are liquid and have a 99 percent chance of repayment at least, to advance money based on their paper, but there can be no more AIGs under the Federal Reserve's authority. The gentleman said, Well, they can get on the list of too big to fail. There is no such list. There is literally no such list. This is a hard-held myth by the Republicans.”