formed in making their investment decisions, especially when official america knew there were misreputations in the financial status of b of a? >> well, again, those judgments were up to bank of america. our job was to try to make sure the system was stabilized. >> mr. chairman, why did you think it was nice for b of a to acquire merrill lynch when lehman had been allowed to fail? what was the thinking of saving a.i. 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