Mr. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had made an urgent and unusual evening visit to Capitol Hill, and they were gathered around a conference table in the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “When you listened to him describe it you gulped," said Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York. As Senator Christopher Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.” Mr. Schumer added, “History was sort of hanging over it, like this was a moment.”
Comments