Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has plans to reform Wall Street and prevent the sorts of economic crisis now plaguing the nation's financial services sector. But a release from the Republican Part of Wisconsin claimed that Obama's speech in Green Bay Monday, three days after John McCain laid out a specific plan to address the crisis on Wall Street, provided no discernable plan for the banking crisis and ignored Obama's previous record in Washington.
Obama held a noon hour rally at Green Bay's Resch Center, the same venue for last week's event with Republicans McCain and Sarah Palin. "Even though there's a storm that's overwhelming Wall Street right now, on Main Street there have been quiet storms going on for a very long time," said Obama. "There have people crying out for a government that's fighting for them for a very long time, and it's fallen on deaf ears, and that's one of the things that we have to change in this election."
Obama outlined a six-point plan to reform Wall Street. He said firms that borrow money from the government should be subject to government oversight and supervision. "Taxpayers who have now been called upon to spend nearly a trillion dollars to save our economy from the excesses of Wall Street, have every right to expect that financial institutions are not taking excessive risks," said Obama. "It's pretty straightforward, if they expect our money to back them up, then we've got to have some say in terms of how they spend the money, and what they're doing with it." Obama also wants more transparency between corporate executives and shareholders, to the point of full disclosure. "We cannot give a blank check to Washington, with no oversight and no accountability, when no oversight and no accountability is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place."
