g meryl and citigroup when these companies had failed to adequately perform and uphold their fiduciary responsibilities to their stockholders? what made these three different from lehman? >> we made extraordinary efforts to prevent lehman from failing. we were unsuccessful, partly because we could not find a merger partner. bank of america was a potential partner. they decided against it and we didn't try to coerce them to do it. we didn't have the powers to save lehman and that's why they failed, very much -- we were very concerned about it and our concerns proved to be justified. with respect to the other cases, we did everything we could to avoid a systemic failure because of the risks to the system, a.i.g. was possible to address because the large insurance company provided collateral for a loan which allowed us to provide liquidity to the financial products division which was the source of the problem. after the congress passed the t.a.r.p. legislation, it was easier to address these probingdz. if we had t.a.r.m. in september we might have been able to address lehman problem. >> w

i remember when professor meryl streep warned us of alar causing cancer which just about ruined the apple industry for two years, that also was wrong. we heard about other things causing cancer which caused the industry billions of dollars and disrupted very healthy patterns of nutrition that could have been based on psychly mates rather than high fructose corn syrup. that, too, is wrong. we remember the nuclear power catastrophe at three-mile island when dr. jane fonda, that ph.d. genius, taught us that nuclear power was so dangerous, that what we have done instead of using nuclear power we've begun relying on overseas oil and gas and burning coal. then remember the acid rain? that was a near high pitch. that's what we hear about global warming. ronald reagan stood up, put his hand and said, no, we are going to have a scientific research on this acid rain issue before we commit all sorts of regulations and taxes that will destroy our economy. luckily rage did that and when a $500 million study was complete, it verified the fact that acid rain was a minimal problem, not a major problem an

next speaker is meryl matthews, the director of the council for affordable house insurance. >> well, thank you, grover. it's a great pleasure to be here. i'm here to talk a little bit about the public plan. the government-run public plan, we already have a government-run public plan. it's called medicare and medicaid. it has price controls. everyone is forced into medicare, part a. if you sign up for social security, you have to be in medicare part a. there's a lawsuit out there trying to give people the freedom to opt out of medicare part a. but currently, you got to be in it. at least that's the way h.h.s. sees it. there's rampant fraud and abuse in medicare and medicaid. whatever the government-run program starts -- however it starts out, it is eventually going to look like medicare and medicaid at some point in time. there will be price controls. one aspect of the legislation, one piece of legislation sfatted that it would be medicare plus 10% for the government-run public option. so they would give doctors and hospitals a little bit more than medicare. maybe. maybe. you may have