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VOA常速英语:US Regulators Want New Powers to Deal With Financial Crisis

2009-03-25来源:和谐英语

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America's top financial officials say they need broad new powers to regulate companies like insurance giant AIG, which are partly blamed for the country's financial crisis. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before the House Financial Services Committee Tuesday.

In recent weeks AIG and its multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout have become targets of public fury and frustration. A once-successful titan in the insurance industry, AIG (American Insurance Group) became enmeshed in America's home mortgage meltdown by insuring questionable debt accrued by banks and other institutions around the world. After receiving more than $180 billion in emergency federal assistance to stave off collapse, AIG recently gave top employees bonuses totaling $165 million - even as the company reported the biggest quarterly loss in U.S. corporate history.

Ire over the AIG debacle continued to smolder on Capitol Hill.

"Bonuses paid out by profitable companies to outstanding employees make sense," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican. "Taxpayer-funded bonuses paid out by failing companies that owe taxpayers money make no sense."

Some AIG executives have returned the bonuses they received, while Congress ponders legislation that would tax the bonuses at an exceptionally high rate.

President Barack Obama has expressed misgivings about the legislation, but he insists he shares in the public's outrage over the AIG bonuses.  

Treasury Secretary Geithner agreed that the bonuses are unconscionable, but said there was no practical way for him to block them. In addition, he said the government's options for dealing with AIG's collapse were limited from the start.

"This is a tragic thing," said Geithner. "We came into this crisis without the authority and the tools necessary to contain the damage to the American economy posed by the very severe pressures working through the financial system."

As Geithner explained, the federal government has the power to take over and liquidate failed banks. But no such mechanism exists for non-bank financial institutions like AIG whose failure would inflict great economic pain on the nation as a whole. The treasury secretary listed the powers the government should possess going forward.

"To sell or transfer the assets or liability of the institution in question. To renegotiate or repudiate the institution's contracts and prevent certain financial contracts with the institution from being terminated on account of conservatorship or receivership," he said. "This proposed legislation would fill a significant void in the current financial services regulatory structure."

Some have asked why companies like AIG were not allowed to go bankrupt, rather than the government investing massive sums of taxpayer money to prop them up.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said AIG's bankruptcy would have made a dire financial crisis far worse, possibly turning an economic recession into a prolonged depression.

"Its failure could have resulted in a 1930s-style global financial and economic meltdown, with catastrophic implications for production, income and jobs," he said.

Several members of Congress, including Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, echoed Secretary Geithner's call for reform. The secretary promised to provide details of the plan in coming days.
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