Obama: 'A sweeping overhaul'

Keeping this for future reference -- one of important milestones to prevent financial crisis recurrance. I picked the key points from money cnn.

"We did not choose how this crisis began. But we do have a choice in the legacy this crisis leaves behind," Obama said. "So today, my administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the financial regulatory system, a transformation on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression."

1. One of Obama's more drastic moves would be to abolish the embattled Office of Thrift Supervision and merge it with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

2. Two regulators would get expanded powers under the Obama proposal: Treasury and the Federal Reserve.

Obama called for the creation of a council of regulators chaired by the Treasury secretary to work alongside the Fed to monitor system-wide risk.

However, the Fed would have most of the power for systemic risk, Geithner said. Top administration officials decided to give the Fed more power after looking at other nations with regulatory councils.

Treasury would also get veto power over Fed decisions to make emergency loans to companies teetering on the verge of collapse. Over the past year, the Treasury has been signing off on such loans. But Geithner said the power should be formalized, since Treasury plays an important role safeguarding taxpayer spending.

3. The White House also aims to tighten up supervision of the securitization markets, requiring firms that originate a security to keep 5% of the "securitized exposure." That means whoever created the financial product would still hold a piece of it, even as it got resold, and would have some interest in its ultimate performance

4. Rating agencies have been blamed for exacerbating the financial crisis by giving top ratings to bad financial products. The official speaking Tuesday did not offer details as to how rating agency oversight might be toughened.

5. Finally, the White House plans to build on the role of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., now charged with taking over bad banks, and give it and other regulators more power to take over and unwind other kinds of troubled financial companies beyond banks.