To patch up the hole in its balance sheet the Fed would have to beg Congress or the U.S. Treasury for a bailout.

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The new patch fixes both the original security hole named after researcher Juan Carlos Garcia Cuartango and a recently discovered variant of the problem.

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's Amplatzer is a fabric-mesh patch threaded through catheters to plug the hole.

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Radiology pioneer Kurt Amplatz spent his career developing a way to treat babies born with heart defects by threading a Goretex-like patch through an artery to the heart and then using it to seal a hole.

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