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Obama wants Wall St clean-up
27/03/2008 18:07 - (SA)
New York - Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama on Thursday vowed to clean up a "distorted" financial system, accusing Wall Street of manipulating markets to generate swift profits instead of lasting growth.
In a major economic speech, the Illinois senator called for an additional stimulus package worth $30bn to stave off a recession and immediate action to save homeowners mired in a mortgage crisis.
"Under Republican and Democratic administrations, we failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices," Obama said.
"We let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales," he said, in a presidential-style setting here, against a backdrop of US flags.
"The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady, sustainable growth; a market that favours Wall Street over Main Street, but ends up hurting both."
Obama's intervention underscored the increasingly dominant role of economics in the 2008 election campaign: just this week his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate John McCain delivered similar addresses.
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