Dinallo, right, with RBA President Al Samuels, left

PEARL RIVER - Our nation’s economic crisis may have bottomed out for some of the Wall Street firms, but there are still going to be problems for the broader economy, especially with credit cards, student loans and other issues, according to New York State Insurance Department Superintendent Eric Dinallo.

Dinallo, who is head of a state regulators' committee in charge of overseeing any future transactions made by financial giant AIG, applauded the federal government’s efforts in forming a bailout plan.

Dinallo, speaking at the Rockland Business Association annual 'Celebrity Dinner', told a crowd of over 200 that Wall Street “can only go up from here,” but that our country’s current fiscal crisis is not yet in the process of turning around.

Though Dinallo said the toughest financial times for Wall Street should have already come to an end, he said he believed the impact of the financial crisis will lead to “one of the worst holiday retail seasons the country has ever seen” due to economic fallout of the current credit card crisis.

Dinallo said that government intervention in the credit crisis, especially within AIG, could not have come at a better time.

“The holding company could have gone bankrupt, and all the while the insurance companies would technically have been okay, but it was thought to be the shock to the system right after Lehman Brothers,” said Dinallo, referring to the time frame in between the decisions of the two corporate giants to declare bankruptcy.

Dinallo said the fed made the right decision.

The Insurance Department head claimed that if no action was taken by the federal government after AIG announced they were going under, the effects would have been “beyond comprehension.”

“Remember, these guys are much bigger than just an insurance company, they are the largest finance service corporation in the world. Every country would have suffered the consequences if they had just disassembled. It would have been irreparable.”