Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said at the Brookings Insitute today, "Even with the breakdown of private risk-management, the financial system would have held together had the second bulwark against crisis -- our regulatory system -- functioned effectively. But, under crisis pressure, it too failed." Bloomberg News says that Greenspan "said low interest rates weren’t to blame for inflating the bubble, placing the blame instead on regulators," "Even though for years our largest 10 to 15 banking institutions have had permanently assigned on-site examiners to oversee daily operations, many of these banks still were able to take on toxic assets that brought them to their knees."