Obama hits back at critics of his Wall Street policies
US President Barack Obama has asserted that his policies on Wall Street “have worked,” rejecting criticism leveled at him by both Democrats and Republicans.
“It is popular in the media, and political discourse both on the left and on the right to suggest that the crisis happened and nothing changed. That is not true,” Obama said during a meeting with top financial regulators on Monday.
The meeting was attended by Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, Securities and Exchange Commissioner Mary Jo White and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray.
They were gathering to check in on how regulators were implementing the Dodd-Frank financial reform law passed in 2010, which aimed at lowering risk in various parts of the US financial system.
Some portions of the law, especially those which pertain to executive compensation on Wall Street, remain unfinished.
Obama said his efforts to overhaul the financial system had led to a better and stronger structure, dismissing the censure as misguided.
“I want to dispel the notion that exists both on the left and on the right that somehow, after the crisis, nothing happened," he said. “We did not just rebuild this, we rebuilt it better, and we’ve rebuilt it stronger.”
Among Democrats, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who is also a presidential hopeful, has aggressively called for new regulations on the financial sector, vowing to break up the country's largest financial institutions.
Sanders maintains that major financial institutions have profound influence in Washington.
However, his rival, Hillary Clinton, has sided with Obama in regard to Wall Street, saying Dodd-Frank gives the government enough authority to guard against most threats to the financial system going forward.
Her Wall Street plan aims to mainly boost oversight of loosely regulated parts of financial markets that can skip traditional scrutiny, such as some types of investment banking.
“Thanks to Dodd-Frank, thanks to President Obama, we've got the tools,” Clinton told CNBC on Monday.
Republicans, on the other hand, have rejected Dodd-Frank as a boondoggle, arguing it has stifled smaller banks and failed to properly address the threats posed by big banks.
Several GOP presidential candidates have said they would repeal the law if elected president.
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