Obama Administration Now Turning Attention to Dismantling NON-Banks

WASHINGTON – A year after Lehman Brothers collapsed, helping to trigger the worst financial crisis in seven decades, the Obama administration is pressing Congress for the power to dismantle other nonbank firms considered so large and influential that they could bring down the entire economy.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was asking a House panel on Thursday to pass legislation that would enable federal regulators to identify and monitor big financial firms and step in to wind them down before they collapse.

The proposal, worked out in an agreement with House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., also will give new powers to the Federal Reserve to enforce tougher requirements for these "too-big-to-fail" companies…

Democrats are largely behind the plan. But Republicans say it will create the expectation that certain companies are so big that the government won’t allow them to fail and will always rescue them with taxpayer dollars…

Republicans also say the bill would put the taxpayers on the hook for administrative costs…