MELTDOWN

Obama Moves to Rein in Wall St.

White House pushes for stricter regulations.

While the focus in the White House in recent weeks has been on how to prevent an immediate financial collapse, a plan to create a new regulatory framework for Wall Street to prevent future crashes is under way as well. President Obama kicked off the effort yesterday at a meeting with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, chief economic advisor Larry Summers, and relevant lawmakers. "This financial crisis was not inevitable," Obama told reporters yesterday. "It happened when Wall Street wrongly presumed markets would continuously rise, and traded in complex financial products without fully evaluating their risks. Here in Washington, our regulations lagged behind changes in our markets—and too often, regulators failed to use the authority that they had to protect consumers, markets and the economy."