Moral Hazard Leads Frank to Oppose Public List

Some daylight emerged Thursday between Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank over whether systemically important financial institutions will be publicly identified. The two men worked closely on legislation to tighten supervision of these large, complex companies and to set up a system for unwinding them if they got into financial trouble. Rep. Frank (D-Mass.) introduced the bill on Tuesday and favors keeping the names of these institutions private. "There will be no identification of a systemically important institution until the hammer falls on it," Rep. Frank said at a hearing Thursday. He said the committee would vote on the bill next week, perhaps as early as Nov. 4. But at the hearing, Mr. Geithner, regulators and other lawmakers said it would be impossible to keep the public from knowing which institutions the government considers too big to fail. "It won't be a secret that they're held to tougher standards," Geithner said.