Posted by: Lily Mei
NEW YORK (CNN) -- President Obama said Monday that the need for the federal government to help prop up the nation's hard-hit financial system is fading.
President Obama says he wants to end the idea that some firms are "too big to fail."
"While there continues to be a need for government involvement to stabilize the financial system, that necessity is waning," he told an audience of key financial and political leaders at New York's famed Federal Hall on Wall Street.
"After months in which public dollars were flowing into our financial system, we are finally beginning to see money flowing back to taxpayers."
Obama noted that although taxpayers won't necessarily "escape the worst financial crisis in decades entirely unscathed," banks have repaid more than $70 billion in government bailout funds.
He called for the closure of regulatory loopholes that contributed to the current financial crisis.
"We've got to close the loopholes that were at the heart of the crisis. Where there were gaps in the rules, regulators lacked the authority to take action," he said.
This weakness "in oversight engendered systematic, and systemic, abuse."
The president said that, while "holding the Federal Reserve fully accountable for regulation of the largest, most interconnected firms, we'll create an oversight council to bring together regulators from across markets to share information, to identify gaps in regulation, and to tackle issues that don't fit neatly into an organizational chart."
Obama noted that, under his plan, "we'll also require these financial firms to meet stronger capital and liquidity requirements and observe greater constraints on their risky behavior."
The only way to avoid a repeat of the financial crisis, he said, "is to ensure that large firms can't take risks that threaten our entire financial system and to make sure they have the resources to weather even the worst of economic storms."
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