Wall Street overhaul becomes law

President Barack Obama has signed into law the most sweeping overhaul of US financial regulations since the Great Depression.

The bill targets the kind of Wall Street risk-taking that helped to trigger a global financial meltdown.

Obama signed it before an audience including bankers, lawmakers and people hurt by the financial crisis and promised: “Because of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes. There will be no more tax-funded bailouts. Period.”

Obama, looking to November congressional elections, pitched the changes as “reforms to empower consumers and investors.”

The American Bankers Association expressed disappointment and said the legislation: “contains a tsunami of new rules and restrictions for traditional banks that had nothing to do with causing the financial crisis in the first place.”

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