Obama attacks Bill Clinton’s economic legacy

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Barack Obama on Thursday laid much of the blame for America’s unfolding credit crisis on the financial deregulation of the 1990s in his hardest hitting attack so far on the economic legacy of Bill Clinton’s administration.

Mr Obama’s speech – the fourth so far this week by a presidential candidate focusing on America’s probable recession – called for an overhaul of US financial regulation and another $30bn in fiscal stimulus.

Without mentioning the Clintons by name, the clear target of Mr Obama’s speech was the economic record of the 1990s. Hillary Clinton has portrayed her candidacy as offering a return to the economic successes of the 1990s. She has also presented herself as more competent on the economy than Mr Obama.

In his address Mr Obama associated Mr Clinton’s abolition of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 with the financial scandals that rocked the early years of the Bush administration and which led up to the bailout earlier this month of Bear Stearns.

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