Finance Space

Barack Obama on Thursday takes his campaign against Wall Street ‘irresponsibility’ to New York, the epicentre of US high finance, as he seeks to swiftly drive regulatory reform into law.

The president will touch down for just a few hours in central Manhattan, to give a speech aimed at Americans in the heartland, finance barons in their sleek corporate headquarters, and Republican lawmakers back in Washington.

President Obama was expected to lay out a case for reforming risky and bloated Wall Street practices, to Americans still trapped in a tough economic climate, and to implore big financial firms to join, not block his overhaul.

‘I think a vast majority of Americans think it is unacceptable to have a situation in which tails, you win, and heads, I lose,’ President Obama said in an interview on CNBC on the eve of his speech. ‘Taxpayers have been put in a position where they had to make a choice. Either we let the entire economy crash because of irresponsibility on Wall Street, or alternatively, we end up having to pony up money.’

President Obama is promising the most sweeping regulatory reform drive since the 1930s Great Depression, and is seeking to build momentum for efforts by Democrats in Congress to overcome Republican opposition and pass a new law.

That effort got a boost on Wednesday, when a Senate panel approved new restrictions on derivatives, the shadowy financial instruments blamed in part for igniting the financial meltdown from which America is just emerging.

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Tags: Finance