Obama Proposes Homeowner Aid

The New York Times has the story (click here). This is an excerpt:

“Under Republican and Democratic administrations, we failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices,” Mr. Obama said. “The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady sustainable growth, a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street but ends up hurting both.”

Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, proposed to rebuild a regulatory structure without clamping too tight a hand on economic innovation. But he was unsparing in his view that industry lobbyists and weak legislators had failed to deal with the risks of a more complex financial system.

“Instead of establishing a 21st-century regulatory framework, we simply dismantled the old one,” he said, “aided by a legal but corrupt bargain in which campaign money all too often shaped policy and watered down oversight.”