OBAMA LASHES OUT AT WALL STREET FAILURE

       US President Barack Obama bluntly warned on Monday that some Wall Street bosses were ignoring lessons of the financial crisis, as he demanded a new age of prudence after bloated years of unchecked excess.
       "The old ways that led to this crisis cannot stand," Obama said, in an outspoken addres delivered in the shadow of US finance firms he blamed for unlesshing global contagion. "History cannot be allowed to repeat itself."
       A year after Lehman Brothers failed, triggering the meltdown, Obama also called on Congress to act this year on regulatory reforms he hailed as the most sweeping bid to tame industry over-exuberance since the Great Depression.
       While blaming much of the crisis on the United States, Obama made clear a week ahead of the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh that he would press global powers to do more to rein in financial industry abuses.
       The president suggested the US economy was returning to growth, but warned that what he called the government's "extraordinary interventions" should not be ended prematurely.
       "All the indicators would tend to suggest that we're starting to see growth," Obama told Bloomberg Television. "What we have to be careful of is taking the crutches away from the patient too early."
       But his prime message after travelling to historic Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York was that, as the economy slowly mends, some key players in America's finance sector were wilfully ignoring the lessons of the crisis.
       "They do so not just at their own peril, but at our nation's," Obama said, noting that many big Wall Street banks and finance houses had received huge government bail-outs at taxpayer expense.
       "Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall."
       While lambasting Wall Street, the president admitted that Washington, and in a wider sense the American people, were culpable for a crisis that sent unemployment up to nearly 10 per cent at home and spread miscry abroad.
       "It was a collective failure of responsibility in Washington, on Wall Street and across America that led to the near-collapse of our financial system one year ago," he said.
       He also urged bosses of top finance firms to make a symbolic down payment in their effort to restore public trust, by taking a cautious tack on pending bonus pay awards.
       Asked whether he would support a second aid package following his massive $787-billion (Bt26.7-trillion) plan passed by Congress in February, Obama told CNBC television he has a "strong inclination not to do it", although he cautioned: "We're not out of the woods yet."
       Duncan Niederauer, head of the stock exchange operator NYSE Euronext, reacted warmly to the speech, saying the "financial crisis created a once-in-a-generation opportunity to modernise our outdated financial regulatory system".
       But Eric Cantor, the Republican whip in the House of Representatives, said "smarter regulation", and not more, was the answer to the financial crisis.
       Days after slapping duties on tyre imports from China, in the most serious trade dispute of his administration with the Asian giant, Obama also denied accusations of protectionism.
       "When, as happened this weekend, we invoke provisions of existing agreements, we do so not to be provocative or to promote self-defeating protectionsim, we do so because enforcing trade agreements is part and parcel of maintaining an open and free trading system," he said.
       Obama argued that when his administration took office in January, it helped stave off an even worse crisis.
       But he warned, "normalcy can not lead to complacency", vowing to press G-20 powers to match his move to "agressively reform" the financial system.
       Obama fleshed out a previously announced strategy for reforming regulatory systems which is awaiting action in Congress, warning that a pre-crisis lack of "common-sense rules" had led the US economy to the brink.
       His administration, he said, would further empower the Federal Reserve to regulate interconnected firms that pose a risk of systemic failure.
       Top firms will be required to meet stronger capital and liquidity requirements and submit to greater restraints on "risky" behaviour.
       Obama proposed a new Consumer Protection Agency to enforce rules prohibiting predatory lending policies by credit firms and mortgage lenders.

       AT A GLANCE
       - "The old ways that led to this crisis cannot stand," Obama said, in an outspoken address delivered in the shadow of US finance firms he blamed for unleashing global contagion. "History cannot be allowed to repeat itself."
       - "It was a collective failure of responsibility in Washington, on Wall Street and across America that led to the near-collapse of or financial system one year ago," he said.
       - Duncan Niederauer, head of the stock exchange operator NYSE Euronext, reacted warmly to the speech, saying the "financial crisis created a one-in-a-generation opportunity to modernise our outdated financial regulatory system."