STEVEN R HURST WASHINGTON President Barack Obama unveiled a systemwide regulatory overhaul yesterday, measures he hopes will restore confidence in the US financial system and prevent a repeat of the worst crisis to hit Wall Street in seven decades.

STEVEN R HURST WASHINGTON

President Barack Obama unveiled a systemwide regulatory overhaul yesterday, measures he hopes will restore confidence in the US financial system and prevent a repeat of the worst crisis to hit Wall Street in seven decades.

The Obama plan would give new powers to the Federal Reserve - the US central bank - to oversee the entire financial system and create a new consumer protection agency to guard against the types of abuses that played a big role in the current crisis.

The president said his plan was "a sweeping overhaul of the financial regulatory system, a transformation on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression."

Obama attributed much of the country's current problem to "a cascade of mistakes and missed opportunities" which happened over several decades.

He again blamed that "a culture of irresponsibility took root from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street."

The 88-page white paper put forward by the admini-stration will spark intense debate in Congress, with opponents already charging that it imposes too many restrictions that will harm the ability of US financial com-panies to compete in the global economy.

The administration's plan details an effort to change a regulatory regime that Obama's economic team says was un-able to cope with burgeoning new credit products and the increasing complexities of the marketplace.

Obama wants Congress to make the plan law by the end of the year. - AP