Obama adds financial reform to major accomplishments

 The most comprehensive reform of American financial regulation in decades has now been signed into law. The
move represents the broadest overhaul of financial rules since the
Great Depression and is a major victory for President Barack Obama. This was the culmination of a 12-month push by the president to prevent the possibility of another financial meltdown like the global crises that 2007 that nearly plunged the US into a second Great Depression.  Needless to say Wall Street fought bitterly to derail the legislation, which leaves
few corners of the financial industry untouched. It establishes new
consumer protections, gives regulators greater power to dismantle
troubled firms, and limits a range of risky trading activities in a way
that would curb bank profits.

This is President Obama's second historic legislative victory, following last spring's overhaul of the health care system which put the US on the path to universal health care.

European observers of the White House have been highly critical of President Obama because of the perceived slow pace of the "Change" that was promised in the 2008 presidential campaign.  But, as Günther Nonnenmacher points out in the FAZ, this criticism of the president is often the result of ignorance in how governance works in the United States:

Jeder Präsident hat zu seinem Leidwesen
erfahren müssen, dass die amerikanischen Gründerväter mit der
Verfassung das Regieren nicht leicht, sondern schwer machen wollten.
Verglichen mit den Hindernissen („checks and balances“), die in
Washington die Macht des Präsidenten beschränken, erlauben die
berechenbaren Mehrheiten eines parlamentarischen Systems dem
Regierungschef tatsächlich eine Art „Durchregieren“.

Ernst
Fraenkel, der nach seiner Rückkehr aus der Emigration in den
Vereinigten Staaten einer der Mitbegründer der Politischen Wissenschaft
in Deutschland war, hat früh darauf hingewiesen, dass das mächtigste
Parlament der Welt nicht an der Themse, sondern am Potomac, in
Washington residiere.

(Every president has to learn the hard way that the American
founding fathers devised the Constitution not to make governing easy, but
rather difficult. Compared to the obstacles (“checks and balances”) which in
Washington limit the power of the president, the predictable majorities in a
parliamentary system actually permit the prime minister to push through
legislation much more easily.

Ernst Fraenkel, who after returning from exile in the United
States was one of the founders of 
political science in Germany, was one of the first to point out that the
most powerful parliament in the world does not reside on the Thames, but rather
on the Potomac in Washington.)

Read my complete translation over at Watching America.