Reuters:The financial sector will make up a smaller part of the U.S. economy in the future as new regulations clamp down on "massive risk-taking," President Barack Obama said in an interview published on Saturday.
Obama, whose young administration has spearheaded a raft of reforms in the banking sector as part of efforts to tackle the financial crisis, said the industry's role in the United States would look different at the end of the current recession.
"What I think will change, what I think was an aberration, was a situation where corporate profits in the financial sector were such a heavy part of our overall profitability over the last decade," he told the New York Times Magazine. "Part of that has to do with the effects of regulation that will inhibit some of the massive leveraging and the massive risk-taking that had become so common."
Obama said that while the financial sector would still be important, "It just won't be half of our economy."
"We don't want every single college grad with mathematical aptitude to become a derivatives trader," he said. Good plan, since the financial sector does almost zero to add value to what it sells. You make a hammer, you've got a hammer. You work in the financial sector and -- to a large extent -- you're just creating hypotheticals.
