March 2008 - Obama: "Pain Trickles Up"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23828234/

While many of the two Democrats' ideas on the economy overlap, Obama laid out six different areas where he would stiffen regulations of the financial system. He proposed relief for homeowners and the long-term unemployed as part of an additional $30 billion stimulus package, much like the one Clinton offered last week.


He said outdated government regulations have fallen dangerously behind the realities of modern finance.

"We do American business — and the American people — no favors when we turn a blind eye to excessive leverage and dangerous risks," Obama said.

The economic setbacks of recent months, Obama argued, show hardships long felt by middle class Americans had now spread everywhere.

"Pain trickles up," he said.

"If we can extend a hand to banks on Wall Street, we can extend a hand to Americans who are struggling," he said.

Obama dismisses McCain's approach
Bemoaning the nation's economic woes, Obama, like Clinton, dismissed McCain's approach as pure hands-off. On Tuesday, McCain derided government intervention to save and reward banks or small borrowers who behave irresponsibly though he offered few immediate alternatives for fixing the country's growing housing crisis. Obama said McCain's plan "amounts to little more than watching this crisis happen."

Instead, Obama said, the next president should:

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Expand oversight to any institution that borrows from the government.
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Toughen capital requirements for complex financial instruments like mortgage securities.
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Streamline regulatory agencies to end overlap and competition among regulators.

While he laid out a half-dozen principles for closer scrutiny of the financial markets, he did not detail how the different agencies should be organized or exactly how the government should go about peering over the shoulders of bank executives, though aides said later the Federal Reserve would have to assume a greater role.

Although Obama blamed both Republican and Democratic administrations for letting markets get out of control, he took a particular swipe at Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, without naming him explicitly. Obama said outdated bank regulation needed to be reformed in the 1990s, but "by the time the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999, the $300 million lobbying effort that drove deregulation was more about facilitating mergers than creating an efficient regulatory framework." President Clinton signed that repeal.

"Unfortunately, instead of establishing a 21st century regulatory framework, we simply dismantled the old one, aided by a legal but corrupt bargain in which campaign money all too often shaped policy and watered down oversight," Obama said in a thinly veiled reference to Bill Clinton's oft-repeated promise to build a bridge to the 21st century.