Familiar Territory

President Obama went to Wall Street today to call for strict financial reforms, giving a speech on the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

President Obama traveled to lower Manhattan today a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers to argue that the administration's response to the financial crisis has been successful and to pitch his plan to change the regulatory system.

"Although I will never be satisfied while people are out of work and our financial system is weakened, we can be confident that the storms of the past two years are beginning to break," said Obama, speaking in Federal Hall on Wall St. "The growing stability resulting from these interventions means we are beginning to return to normalcy. But what I want to emphasize is this: normalcy cannot lead to complacency," he added. (Read his prepared remarks here.)

If this sounds familiar, it's basically what he said five months ago in Georgetown at a speech on the same subject. It's been five months and Congress and the President have basically done nothing on reform. On an issue that really would be a bipartisan no-brainer with broad public support, Obama has done nothing.

Then again, nobody's really surprised by this.