Ebbie..... surely its obvious that the problems facing the US and the UK are systemic, that there is no answer to your question.

The best Mr Obama can hope for is to restore the US financial system to what it was before the "crash".....a disaster waiting to happen.

The reason....Not just a few greedy bankers, as we are being led to believe, but government and ourselves.
Yes the bankers made their millions, but the reasons that they were allowed to, go much deeper. Government needed the growth to sustain its programme and its own popularity. During the boom years money flowed into the govt coffers like a river, nobody cared that the boom was built on bad money. Tragically even these phoney tax revenues have squandered on mad wars, mismanagment of the economy,and now the taxpayer is being asked to stump up $8 hundred billion to re-install the status quo!!

As part of that mismanagment, we ourselves have been prepared to accept massive credit burdens to avail ourselves of new houses, cars, and all manner of consumer goods, burdens that will bankrupt many and turn the lives of the rest into economic slavery.

The real reason for it all is simply personal greed.....not just the bankers, not just the government, but all of us who want a lifestyle which we know to be unsustainable.

Its often been written....even in these pages, that the Capitalism is based on greed....well go and think about it and maybe someday we will start to elect leaders who will point their fingers at the real underlying reasons for our problems .....Ake