Before meeting with his economic advisers today, President Obama told reporters he’d veto any financial regulatory reform bill that doesn’t “bring the derivatives market under control.”
“I want to see what emerges, but I will veto legislation that does not bring the derivatives market under control and some sort of regulatory framework that assures that we don’t have the same kind of crises that we’ve seen in the past,” he said before meeting with the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.
“We can’t allow history to repeat itself. Never again should American taxpayers be forced to step in and pay the price for the responsibility of speculators on Wall Street who made risky bets with the expectation that taxpayers would be there to break their fall,” he said.
Financial reform is being worked on in the Senate right now. Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday that he hopes to see a bill on the floor next week.
Sen. Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has been working on the reform bill. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, today unveiled her committee’s bill to regulate the over-the-counter derivatives market.
All 41 Republican senators have signed on to a letter saying they’ll vote against Dodd’s bill, claiming it will lead to “endless taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street.”
In a speech on the Senate floor yesterday, Dodd railed against that claim, saying his bill specifically makes future taxpayer bailouts impossible.
In her announcement today, Lincoln mentioned today’s news that the SEC is charging Goldman Sachs for defrauding investors.
“This is another example of how risky Wall Street behavior puts our nation’s financial system in peril,” she said in a statement.
During his State of the Union address, Obama threatened to send back any bill that didn’t include “real reform.”
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