http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2009/06/68207917/1President Obama discussed his plans for overhauling the nation's financial regulatory system at the White House today. Below is our live blog. All times are ET:
12:55: "My administration what I think has to be acknowledged is an historic response to our nation's financial crisis," Obama tells a White House audience that includes key congressional leaders, both Republican and Democrat, and the nation's top financial regulators.
12:56: Obama says his plan is designed "to protect our consumers and the economy from the devastating breakdown we've witnessed in recent years."
12:58: The president decries the economic excesses of the recent past. "It was easy money while it lasted but these schemes were built on a pile of sand." He adds that executive compensation "rewarded recklessness rather than responsibility" and says that "systemic abuse" was permitted by "an absence of regulation."
12:59: "Millions of Americans who acted responsibly have seen their life dreams eroded," Obama says. "Our entire economy has been undermined by that failure. "
1:00: His plan amounts to "a transformation not seen . . . since the great depression," the president says.
1:01: The president is trying to assure critics who think he wants too much regulation of the marketplace. He's a big believer in the free market, Obama says. "Our role is not to disparage wealth but to extend its reach."
1:02 "There are those who say we do not go far enough," Obama says. But he argued it would have been "a mistake" to scrap the existing financial regulatory system and start all over.
1:03: By setting out "clear rules of the road," Obama predicts "we will actually promote a more vibrant market."
1:04: Obama is granting the Federal Reserve authority to regulate large financial firms that up until now have been out of the Fed's purview. "They behaved like banks but chose to be regulated like insurance companies. . . or other entities that were under less scrutiny," Obama says.
1:05: An oversight council will "identify gaps in regulation" and "solve problems in oversight before they can become a crisis," Obama says.
1:07 : Obama says the federal government's Depression-era authority to regulate banks needs to be extended: "We don't have any effective system in place to contain the failure of an AIG."
1:08: The president is creating a new agency with "the power to set standards" for consumer loans. The financial crisis was also fueled by "ordinary Americans" who signed up for loans they couldn't afford or for deals that they didn't understand, says the president. "Those ridiculous contracts with pages of fine print that no one can figure out -- those will be things of the past," Obama promises.
1:09: Non-banks that offer home loans will be held to the same standards as banks, Obama says.
1:10: Regulations need to extend beyond national borders in order to reach multinational companies. His plan will take aim at gaps that exist "between nations," Obama says.
1:12: The president says he's shutting down the Office of Thrift Supervision to prevent banks from trying to "cherry-pick" among federal regulators. "We'll only offer one federal banking charter," he says.
1:13: The free market is "not a free license to ignore the consequences of our actions," the president says.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So now BO wants the fed to control all Big Biz... here it comes folks... hope your ready
Matt
