Obama Declares War on Wall Street

From Financial Times. He wants money, so he's going to where the money is.

"Barack Obama set out broad new measures on financial regulation. The most significant of them is banning deposit-taking banks from proprietary trading that is “unrelated to serving customers”. This activity has generated politically incendiary profits for banks and bonuses for bankers.

The timing was political: the president spoke on the day that Goldman Sachs announced fourth-quarter earnings of $4.95bn. Those of a more populist nature than Mr Obama – both on the left and on the right – will say that he comes late to the game."

...

"Instead of using the control they enjoyed over the banks through the troubled asset relief programme in 2009, the authorities rushed to free banks from the restrictions associated with Tarp.

Mr Obama may now be ruing this lost opportunity. The public mood has swung against Wall Street – to which Mr Obama appears too close for comfort. Trillion-dollar bail-outs for people on million-dollar salaries have infuriated Americans living in fear of losing their jobs and their homes.

Mr Obama’s political team is running to catch up. In December he called bank executives to the White House to scold them and, last week, he announced a $90bn levy on the banks to claw back some of the costs of the bail-out. These actions were broadly justified. The new proposal, however, is a radical shift – and a mistake."

"Too big to fail" is failing...and guess what? Our own government's next--it's too big to fail, and will fail anyway--nobody's stepping up to bail US out!