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New York. President Barack Obama on Monday tried to revive a stalled push for stricter oversight of Wall Street, using the anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse to argue for sweeping regulatory changes. Lehman was once the fourth-largest US investment bank and its bankruptcy filing was the largest in US history.

Obama said he saw new signs of the kind of high-risk business behavior that nearly caused a financial meltdown a year ago and warned Wall Street there would not be another bailout.

In a speech in the heart of New York’s financial district, Obama said he felt confident the country’s financial system had been steadied. He urged Congress to enact “sensible rules of the road” and put stronger controls on the system, saying that the piecemeal approach in place when things cascaded toward meltdown last year must be corrected. He said the global financial crisis was the result of a “collective failure” of responsibility in Washington, on Wall Street and across America.

Obama wants to give the Federal Reserve new powers to monitor big financial companies that could pose a “systemic risk” to the economy. He seeks a process for the federal government to seize and liquidate troubled financial companies and create a new consumer watchdog agency for products like mortgages, car loans and credit cards.

Obama staunchly defended his stimulus actions. He reported that the US taxpayer had made a 17 percent return on the money invested by the government in massive bailout packages.

“We are beginning to return to normalcy,” Obama said. He added, however, that normalcy could not lead to complacency. “The American taxpayer will not be there next time to break the fall. They have shouldered the burden of the bailout and are still shouldering the burden of the fallout.”

Obama warned Wall Street finance companies not to further squander public trust with huge 2009 bonus payments rewarding executives for “short-term” gain.

Adding to pressure on Obama to get the regulatory overhaul back on track is the approach of the Group of 20 summit on Sept. 24-25 in Pittsburgh. Obama will host leaders of major developed countries, including Britain, Germany and Japan, and fast-growing economies such as China for talks on strengthening the global financial structure. He said he would demand the rest of the world agree to sweeping regulatory reform at the summit.

Meanwhile, Beijing filed a World Trade Organization complaint on Monday over new US tariffs on Chinese tires, stepping up pressure on Washington in their latest trade dispute.



Agencies