Barack Obama Morning News

The bill’s principal provisions establish a process for dismantling large, failing financial institutions; set up a council to identify and regulate firms that are so big, interconnected or risky that they need heightened supervision to keep them from bringing down the whole financial system; create a new consumer financial-protection agency to squelch unfair and abusive practices; and for the first time, regulate over-the-counter derivatives markets. The bill also contains provisions on executive pay, investor protection, credit ratings, hedge funds and insurance.
I commend the House of Representatives for passing The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009. This legislation brings us another important step closer to necessary, comprehensive financial reform that will create clear rules of the road, consistent and systematic enforcement of those rules, and a stronger, more stable financial system with better protections for consumers and investors.

The Senate is working on similar legislation, and I urge both houses of Congress to pass this necessary reform as quickly as possible on behalf of the American people. I look forward to signing a strong bill that establishes and enforces clear rules; closes the loopholes that allowed Wall Street firms and other creditors to game the system and evade accountability; protects consumers and investors from predatory lending and deceptive financial practices; and gives the government the necessary tools to prevent any institution from posing a risk to the whole system or making the American taxpayer collateral damage in the event of future turmoil.

The crisis from which we are still recovering was born not only of failure on Wall Street, but also in Washington. We have a responsibility to learn from it, and to put in place reforms that will promote sound investment, encourage real competition and innovation, and prevent such a crisis from ever happening again. That's how we will build a stronger foundation for our lasting growth.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed support Thursday for a Senate Democratic proposal to expand Medicare, raising prospects that the two chambers of Congress can work out differences on health-care legislation.

The proposal would open Medicare to some people ages 55 to 64, and is a key feature of a deal among senior Senate Democrats that would abandon efforts to enact a big government-run health-insurance program. The deal would also empower the government's Office of Personnel Management to contract with private insurers to offer new low-cost insurance plans….

Ms. Pelosi (D., Calif.) stopped short of endorsing the full Senate compromise, saying she needed to see "something in writing." But she said "there is certainly a great deal of appeal" in expanding Medicare…

The House speaker said she would be willing to begin negotiations on a House-Senate compromise bill the weekend of Dec. 19-20 if the Senate is done by then…

Ms. Pelosi said the House and Senate bills "are probably 75% compatible," and suggested efforts to reconcile differences could go quickly. "We have just a few issues we have to deal with," she said.President Barack Obama entered the pantheon of Nobel Peace Prize winners with humble words Thursday, acknowledging his own few accomplishments while delivering a robust defense of war and promising to use the prestigious prize to "reach for the world that ought to be."

Just nine days after ordering 30,000 more U.S. troops into battle in Afghanistan, Obama delivered a Nobel acceptance speech that he saw as a treatise on war's use and prevention. He crafted much of the address himself and the scholarly remarks — at about 4,000 words — were nearly twice as long as his inaugural address…

The president laid out the circumstances where war is justified — in self-defense, to come to the aid of an invaded nation and on humanitarian grounds, such as when civilians are slaughtered by their own government or a civil war threatens to engulf an entire region…

He also emphasized alternatives to violence, stressing the importance of both diplomatic outreach and sanctions with teeth to confront nations such as Iran or North Korea that defy international demands to halt their nuclear programs or those such as Sudan, Congo or Burma that brutalize their citizens.