Marking a year of world’s financial woes

It's a year since the collapse of investment bank Lehman brothers, which heralded the start of the global financial meltdown. US President Obama addressed the nation from Wall Street.

On Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a 20-minute speech from the Wall Street on the anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse. The President has called on Congress to allow his administration to overhaul the country's financial regulatory system.

While the economic storms of the past two years are beginning to ease, there continues to be a need for government involvement to help regulate the financial systems, President Obama said.

The address has also defended his economic policies, which key White House staffers say prevented a second great depression. Barack Obama reassured the history won’t be able to repeat itself and for that new regulations must be put in place on Wall Street. The President promised there will no longer be an atmosphere where risks can be taken without consequences as he believes it were loopholes in legislation that allowed for this crisis to happen.

“What took place one year ago was not a failure of regulation or legislation,” President Obama said. “It was a collective failure of responsibility in Washington, on Wall Street and across the America that led to the collapse of our financial system one year ago.”

Economist Peter Schiff predicted this crisis years ago and was laughed at back then. He says, if the Obama administration doesn’t change course and quickly start bailing out banks and the auto industry, the United States is going to change for the worst.

“What's likely to happen, unfortunately, if we continue on this path…I think we're going to have massive inflation in the United States and I think a result of that is likely to be capital controls where the U.S. government makes it illegal for Americans to move their money offshore,” Schiff told RT. “I think the inflation they create could cause crises to rise dramatically for food and energy and that they actually impose price controls… and when you wind up doing that, you end up having shortages and you have to stand in line…because that's what happens when you have governments fixing prices and controlling markets."

Watch the full interview with economist Peter Schiff

Read also USA and Britain Pay 10 Trillion for Illusion of Stability