Dokumentation: Obamas Forderungen im Wortlaut

Good morning, everybody. I just had a very productive meeting with two members of my Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Paul Volcker, who's the former chair of the Federal Reserve Board, and Bill Donaldson, previously the head of the SEC.

And I deeply appreciate the counsel of these two leaders and the board that they've offered as we have dealt with a broad array of very difficult economic challenges.

Now, over the past two years, more than 7 million Americans have lost their jobs in the deepest recession our country has known in generations. Rarely does a day go by that I don't hear from folks who are hurting.

And every day, we are working to put our economy back on track and put America back to work. But even as we dig our way out of this deep hole, it's important that we not lose sight of what led us into this mess in the first place.

This economic crisis began as a financial crisis, when banks and financial institutions took huge, reckless risks in pursuit of quick profits and massive bonuses.

When the dust settled, and this binge of irresponsibility was over, several of the world's oldest and largest financial institutions had collapsed or were on the verge of doing so. Markets plummeted, credit dried up and jobs were vanishing by the hundreds of thousands each month. We were on the precipice of a second Great Depression.

To avoid this calamity, the American people, who were already struggling in their own right, were forced to rescue financial firms facing crisis largely of their own creation.

And that rescue, undertaken by the previous administration, was deeply offensive, but it was a necessary thing to do. And it succeeded in stabilizing the financial system and helping to avert that depression.

Since that time, over the past year, my administration has recovered most of what the federal government provided to banks. And last week I proposed a fee to be paid by the largest financial firms in order to recover every last dime.

But that's not all we have to do. We have to enact common-sense reforms that will protect American taxpayers and the American economy from future crises as well. For, while the financial system is far stronger today than it was one year ago, it's still operating under the same rules that led to its near-collapse.

These are rules that allowed firms to act contrary to the interests of customers, to conceal their exposure to debt through complex financial dealings, to benefit from taxpayer-insured deposits, while making speculative investments; and to take on risks so vast that they pose threats to the entire system.

That's why we are seeking reform to protect consumers.