{"id":2970,"date":"2009-09-15T13:54:19","date_gmt":"2009-09-15T13:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/air_of_hopefulness_at_obama_wall_street_speech\/"},"modified":"2020-07-07T10:59:07","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T10:59:07","slug":"air_of_hopefulness_at_obama_wall_street_speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/air_of_hopefulness_at_obama_wall_street_speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Air of Hopefulness at Obama Wall Street Speech – National Consumers League"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director<\/strong><\/p>\n

New York, NY \u2013 There was an air of excitement at historic Federal Hall yesterday \u2013 a historic setting for President Obama\u2019s \u201ctough love\u201d speech delivered on Wall Street at the place where George Washington took the oath of office. Yes, despite reports in the major newspapers<\/a> of a grim-faced audience hearing the President\u2019s words<\/a>, I was there for the speech with NCL Board member Sam Simon, and we both thought there was an air of hopefulness among the Wall Street audience. There was a sense that we\u2019ve turned a corner and that there are better economic times ahead. The president received sustained applause as he walked in and stood at the podium: as if the audience was saying \u2013 \u201cwe know you are under attack by the right – and maybe you\u2019re disrespected in other parts of the country \u2013 not here in New York City \u2013 here we support you!\u201d<\/p>\n

The audience included the President\u2019s economic team \u2013 Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner, Christina Romer, Paul Volcker and a host of New York officials \u2013 Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silvers and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, among them, and Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank (D-MA).<\/p>\n

This was the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers\u2019 collapse<\/a>. After chronicling the crisis of a year ago, Obama noted, \u201cWe helped to restore capital and confidence\u2026 We\u2019re putting people to work, repairing roads and bridges and hospitals. Eight months later this effort continues. We can be confident that the storms of the last few years are beginning to break.\u201d He noted that consumer advocates had played an important role in working for legislative reforms.<\/p>\n

But the president also admonished Wall Street not to return to some of their worst practices. \u201cNormalcy cannot lead to complacency. Some are misreading this moment. They are choosing to ignore those lessons at our nation\u2019s peril. I want everyone to hear my words. We won\u2019t go back. . . too many were motivated by an appetite for quick kills. And expect taxpayers to break their fall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately the President wants to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and consumer groups strongly support such an entity \u2013 whose primary function will be to protect consumers against intentionally complex agreements with \u201cgotcha\u201d clauses that bury information about fees while creating uniform regulations so banks and financial firms can\u2019t shop around for the most hands-off regulatiors, as they do today, exploiting loopholes in the system.<\/p>\n

The President closed with this message to Wall Street: You don\u2019t have to wait for government to force you to act responsibly, do it on your own! For example, he told them \u201cput your 2009 bonuses up for shareholder vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

We thought the President hit all the right points, cajoling Wall Street, while affirming the good things about our economic system when it is working effectively: stimulating competition and spurring innovation. It was important to mark the one-year anniversary of a darker time, and highlight government\u2019s role in protecting companies and consumers from what might have been a more prolonged and far harsher economic toll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director New York, NY \u2013 There was an air of excitement at historic Federal Hall yesterday \u2013 a historic setting for President Obama\u2019s \u201ctough love\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2970"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11429,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970\/revisions\/11429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}