US Presidency
2010

But we don't have that kind of process designed to contain the failure of a Lehman Brothers or any of the largest and most interconnected financial firms in our country. That's why, when this crisis began, crucial decisions about what would happen to some of the world's biggest companies companies employing tens of thousands of people and holding hundreds of billions of dollars in assets had to take place in hurried discussions in the middle of the night. And that's why, to save the entire economy from an even worse catastrophe, we had to deploy taxpayer dollars. Now, much of that money has now been paid back and my administration has proposed a fee to be paid by large financial firms to recover all the money, every dime, because the American people should never have been put in that position in the first place. But this is why we need a system to shut these firms down with the least amount of collateral damage to innocent people and innocent businesses.