Obama to mark Lehman collapse with key speech

President Barack Obama will today use the first anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse to talk about plans to wind down the government role in a financial sector.

Mr Obama’s speech in New York will push Congress to take action on regulatory reform to prevent the kind of collapse that the US economy went through last year.

He also plans to repeat his call for global partners to coordinate to prevent future crises.

An administration source said Mr Obama will also discuss his team’s efforts to repair the economy.

As part of that effort Mr Obama has called on Congress to pass a sweeping overhaul of how financial institutions behave but the response has been slow.

An administration official said the president will again decry the hands-off approach from Washington that allowed Lehman Brothers and other firms to engage in irresponsible lending, which eventually led the largest US financial institutions to the brink of collapse.

Mr Obama will also say that the financial community must take responsibility, not just to support his proposed overhaul but also to police itself.