US At a recent White House meeting, Paul Volcker, the 81-year-old former chairman of the Fed and a part-time adviser to Barack Obama, said the president should delay revamping the US regulatory system until he had quelled the financial crisis. “There’s no point in trying to rebuild a burning house,” he reportedly said. Mr Obama ignored the advice. The White House’s re-regulation plans are proceeding apace.
The same applies to all the other plans Mr Obama has in the pipeline, of which there are many. Let us divide them between the urgent and the merely important. Among the urgent, on Monday Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, will make a second attempt to launch a plan to relieve banks of their toxic assets following a botched first attempt last month.
