“As President Obama prepares to deliver his final State of the Union address on January 12, it’s difficult to remember how incredibly bad the economy was when he took office seven years ago and how important financial reform is to getting the economy working again for all Americans.

“Unfortunately, this difficulty in remembering isn’t an accident. Wall Street, its allies and lobbyists have spent tens of millions of dollars to distract and divide the American people with false spin about how bad the financial crash was and the importance of comprehensive financial reform for American families’ economic security, opportunity, and prosperity.

“How bad was it? When the President took office in January 2009, it was just a few months after Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Citigroup, and virtually every other megabank and financial activity in the country failed or nearly did. Before President George W. Bush left office on January 20, 2009, trillions of dollars in bailouts had already been thrown at the financial industry to prevent its collapse. As President Obama entered office, the country was in the middle of the worst financial crash since the Great Crash of 1929 and was facing an economic catastrophe that was deteriorating so quickly that a second Great Depression was a real possibility.”

***

Read the full Huffington Post piece by Dennis Kelleher here.