Obama Speech To Wall Street!

Something remarkable almost happened yesterday: I found myself agreeing, at least for a moment, both with the underlying vision and actual policy proposed in a speech by President Obama.

I happened to be walking by a TV report of his speech and thought I heard him say

We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis … cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences….

That sounded too good to be true! The president finally realized, it seemed, that his debt-producing, deficit-magnifying profligate spending could not longer be supported! But realizing that what sounds too good to be true usually is too good to be true, I checked and of course discovered that what I had heard were snippets of this paragraph of his speech:

We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses. 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.

Thus what the president actually said and meant is that the evil villains in his audience had to stop their “reckless behavior and unchecked excess.” His own, of course, would go on unchecked.

So much for the policy. But there was also an underlying regulatory vision. The president stated that he would be calling on Congress to implement “the most ambitious overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the Great Depression.”

As it happens, I agree with much of this vision. I think the only thing wrong with its aim is the target. What we need is for the Congress to step up and regulate its own and the administration’s “reckless behavior and unchecked excess.”

And to get that we’ll need a new Congress.

ADDENDUM

It may be worth noting that perhaps Obama’s teleprompter was malfunctioning on Wall Street, since he stated that his White House has

worked closely with leaders in the Senate and the House, including not only Barney [Frank], but also Senators Chris Dodd and Richard Shelby, and Barney is already working with his counterpart, Sheldon [sic] Bachus. And we intend to pass regulatory reform through Congress.

Now this is an interesting twofer since 1) as far as anyone knows Sen. Max Baucus has not changed his first name to “Sheldon” (the [sic] quoted above is in the text of the transcript on the White House site); but 2) whoever transcribed the president’s remarks and/or whoever put them up on the White House web site misspelled the Senator’s last name, which of course is Baucus, not Bachus.

We’re in good hands….

ADDENDUM II

On the other hand, maybe the president’s teleprompter misspoke the first name of Rep. Spencer Bachus (R, Ala), the Ranking Member on the House Financial Services Committee, relieving the transcriber/web site poster of any responsibility for the gaffe.