Obama makes financial reform one of his 'top priorities'

The United States has been “asleep at the switch” and a financial regulatory upgrade is needed in the wake of Bernard Madoff’s alleged $49.4bn (€34.5bn) fraud scheme and the $692bn (€484bn) Wall Street bailout, president-elect Barack Obama said today.

Mr Obama described Madoff’s alleged actions as “a massive fraud that was made possible in part because the regulators who were assigned to oversee Wall Street dropped the ball”.