The economy of the world Follow

IT IS a fair bet that one of Barack Obama’s new-year’s resolutions was to rattle Wall Street. A week after hitting America’s largest financial firms with a “responsibility” fee, to recoup up to $120 billion in bail-out losses, on Thursday January 21st the president proposed dramatic new curbs on their activities. Keen to show progress in at least one part of his agenda, especially after an election in Massachusetts stripped the Democrats of their super-majority in the Senate and put health-care reform in doubt, Mr Obama touted the plan as a way to cut the bloated giants of finance down to size and constrain excessive risk-taking with customer deposits. “Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by banks that are too big to fail,” he thundered.