WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama plans to use the first anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse to talk about plans to wind down the government role in a financial sector that needed a Washington bailout last year, an administration official said Sunday.
Obama’s speech in New York on Monday will push Congress to take action on regulatory reform to prevent the kind of tailspin that the economy went through last year. Obama also plans to repeat his call for global partners to co-ordinate to prevent future crises.
An administration official, who discussed details of the speech on the condition of anonymity so as not to upstage the president, said Obama will also discuss his team’s efforts to repair the economy.
As part of that effort, Obama has called on Congress to pass a sweeping overhaul of how financial institutions behave but has seen slower-than-sought action. An administration official said the president will again decry the hands-off approach from Washington that allowed Lehman Brothers and other firms to engage in irresponsible lending, which eventually led the largest U.S. financial institutions to the brink of collapse.
Obama will also tell the New York audience that the financial community must take responsibility, not just to support his proposed overhaul but also to police itself, the official said.
