Jeremy Miller
The President of the United States has declared it “America’s back” in a speech in Philadelphia, despite alarming statistics and a surge in global stock market volatility in recent weeks.
Joe Biden made his speech at the dedication of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Wednesday, citing the Republican Party of George W. Bush and his own presidency from 2008 to 2010 as partly responsible for the current financial crisis, which he insists the Democrats were warned about.
“Yes, there was a lot of small talk,” he told the audience, “but we didn’t do anything that was fundamental. We didn’t have a rational dialogue on how do we do this, or what is the way of intervening to ensure long-term prosperity in this great republic, and long-term prosperity in communities like [Philadelphia].”
Biden added that the nation’s subsequent economic downturn was due to that “failure of leadership”.
“Not just leadership, but an attitude, an attitude that said, this is not going to be real tough, it’s just going to be a little bit bumpy,” he said.
He said the economic collapse had largely been caused by “the bumbling economic ignorance” of the Bush administration.
Joe Biden called for a “fundamental transformation of Wall Street” to avoid a repeat of the financial crisis
Joe Biden called for a “fundamental transformation of Wall Street” to avoid a repeat of the financial crisis.
“The American people have to be held accountable,” he said, “for what occurred, but Wall Street has to be reined in. We’ve got to impose some fundamental redistribution of risk, right?”
Vice President Mike Pence appeared to agree, saying the US needs a banking industry “whose job is to serve our communities and serve our farmers and serve our blue-collar workers, not be a source of leverage for global megabanks, to be the basis for prosperity but also to be one that doesn’t cause another depression”.
Biden’s political career began in 1972, when he was a US senator from Delaware, a position he held for 35 years. While on the stump for a possible run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2015, Biden declared he had put his doctorate in law behind him to run as Barack Obama’s vice-president.