‘Not learning from past’

US president Barack Obama says some Wall Street firms are ignoring the lessons of the Lehman Brothers collapse. He warns that they risk not only their futures, but the country’s future as well. In his speech to Wall Steet on the first anniversary of Lehman’s collapse, Obama cautioned: “normalcy cannot lead to complacency”. He said some in the financial industry are misreading the moment and not learning from the past.

‘No more bailouts’

Obama sternly warned Wall St against returning to the sort of reckless and unchecked behavior that threatened the nation with a second Great Depression. Even as he noted the US economy and financial system were pulling out of a downward spiral, Obama warned financial titans that they could not count on any more bailouts. “We can be confident that the storms of the past two years are beginning to break,” he said.

‘Don’t fight reform’

Obama urged financial firms not to fight regulatory reform and urged Congress to pass his proposals by the end of the year. “One year ago, we saw in stark relief how markets can err; how a lack of common-sense rules can lead to excess and abuse; how close we can come to the brink,” Obama said. “One year later, it is incumbent on us to put in place those reforms that will prevent this kind of crisis from ever happening again.”