Frank: Congress not in mood for bailouts

WASHINGTON, March 1 (UPI) -- U.S. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., says Congress has lost its appetite for bailing out troubled banks.

Frank also asserts bank bondholders, such as university and hospital endowments that bought debt from troubled banks, should not be left holding the bag if the financial institutions are taken over by the government, Financial Times reported Sunday.

"These (bondholders are) not all bad people … . A lot of good entities, a lot of public purpose charitable entities, got hornswoggled into 'swaptions' and other things that they in no way understood. … Do you want to tell some people never to get back in the business of investing in banks again?" Frank said.

He also told the Times he was "agnostic" on whether the United States should temporarily nationalize troubled banks, saying "mismanagement" of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program launched by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson would make nationalization harder.

"Anything that would require a lot more commitment of funds, like buying up much more of the institutions, is on hold," he said. "Part of the problem is that Paulson's administration of the funding so angered people."