While congress has been sharply focused on health care reform, the president wants some insurance for the health of the financial sector.
A year after Lehman Brothers collapsed, starting the tsunami that crashed over the U.S. economy, President Obama is pushing for tougher financial regulation — and he’s doing it from Wall Street.
“I want everybody here to hear my words: We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis,” said President Obama.
The president wants Congress to get stalled financial legislation moving again. But mostly, he wants to remind the nation where we’ve been in the last year.
“Although I will never be satisfied while people are out of work and our financial system is weakened, we can be confident that the storms of the past two years are beginning to break,” said President Obama.
The president wants to begin winding down the government’s involvement in the financial sector — leaving behind a tougher regulatory firewall — with the federal reserve taking on broad new powers.
“Taken together, we are proposing the most ambitious overhaul of the financial system since the Great Depression.”
That plan would also create a new consumer protection agency.
“I think it actually has more political than economic significance. A lot of the powers that this agency would have are already resident in the existing regulators that we have,” said Greg Ip.
A year after Lehman, the U.S. economy is showing signs of a slow recovery and the president is hoping to reset the boundary lines on Wall street.