US President Obama proposed a new regulatory structure for the country’s financial system on Wednesday, declaring that it is needed to protect the rights of ordinary consumers and to guard against the murky practices that led to the current financial crisis. “A cascade of mistakes and missed opportunities” over decades led to the present problems, the president said. “It was easy money, while it lasted.” But, he added, “These schemes were built on a pile of sand.”

The president said he would send to Congress a package calling for a new “oversight council” to study regulatory gaps and issues that do not fit into the traditional framework; creation of an agency to monitor the financial system’s stability, not just the health of individual institutions, and enhancement of the Federal Reserve’s regulatory powers. The overall goal, he said, is to avoid the kind of middle-of-the-night telephone calls and unpalatable decisions that accompanied the current situation — letting big companies fail, or prop them up with taxpayers’ money, for instance.

Obama said his goal was “a system that works for business and consumers,” one that will enhance “honest, vigorous competition” rather than reward gimmickry.

President Obama’s plan to reshape financial regulation is the product of weeks of meetings among government officials, financial experts, lawmakers, industry executives and lobbyists, many of whom were invited to help the White House draft the proposal. Obama told reporters on Tuesday that a “lack of oversight” allowed what he called “wild risk-taking.” He said it led to “very dangerous” conditions that imperiled the global economy. Obama blamed the financial crisis on “a culture of irresponsibility” that he said had taken root from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street, and he said regulations crafted to deal with the depression of the 1930s had been “overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st century global economy.”

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