Congressman Stephen F. Lynch (MA-8) wrote to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder today expressing serious concern about his statements at a Senate hearing last week indicating some Wall Street banks are “too big to jail.”

“A handful of large Wall Street Banks caused the financial crisis by engaging in bad behavior that wrecked our economy and sent us into a recession, inflicting damage on middle class families that they are still dealing with today,” said Lynch. “No major Wall Street bank or banker has been convicted of a crime. They have been charged modest fines that are at best slaps on the wrist. And now in the blunt assessment of the Attorney General of the United States we are told that the reason we have not seen criminal convictions is that the banks have become too big to prosecute. While we appreciate the Attorney General's honesty, this situation he describes is not acceptable.”

Lynch, a senior Member of the House Financial Services Committee and House Oversight & Government Reform Committee, has been a vocal critic of the irresponsible practices of banks that caused the crisis. He voted against the bill that authorized the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that bailed out the big banks in 2008 and he reigned in reckless behavior at banks by working to craft an effective Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act and by fighting off attempts to weaken its accountability provisions.

The full text of the letter from Congressman Lynch to Attorney General Holder can be found here.