President Obama urges US healthcare action

Two days after the White House hosted an inconclusive summit on health care reform, President Barack Obama has urged Americans to find common ground.

In his weekly radio address, Mr Obama said tens of millions of Americans could not afford to wait another generation for change.

He said it was time to move past the bickering and game-playing which was blocking progress on reform.

The White House said he would announce "the way forward" next week.

President Obama hosted a day-long televised health care summit in Washington on Thursday, which ended without a deal to break the deadlock between parties.

The president and his allies want to expand health coverage to include millions of uninsured Americans.

Republicans said his plans were not acceptable and called for a fresh start.

In his radio address, he said he remained "eager and willing to move forward with members of both parties".

"It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to act.

"It's time for those of us in Washington to live up to our responsibilities to the American people and future generations. So, let's get this done."

China decries Barack Obama's plan to meet Dalai Lama

China has again urged the United States to cancel a planned meeting between President Barack Obama and the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

The two men will meet at the White House on 18 February, US spokesman Robert Gibbs has confirmed.

He said the Sino-US relationship was mature enough to disagree while finding common ground on international issues.

China had already said that such a meeting would seriously undermine relations with the United States.

Mr Gibbs said the Dalai Lama was "an internationally respected religious leader".

"He's a spokesman for Tibetan rights. The president looks forward to an engaging and constructive meeting," he said.

"We think we have a mature enough relationship with the Chinese that we can agree on mutual interests, but also have a mature enough relationship that we know the two countries are not always going to agree on everything."

China reacted quickly to the announcement through its Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu.

"We firmly oppose the Dalai Lama visiting the United States and US leaders having contact with him," Mr Ma said.

"We urge the US side to fully understand the high sensitivity of Tibet-related issues, and honor its commitment to recognize Tibet as part of China and to oppose 'Tibet independence'," he added.

"China urges the US... to immediately call off the wrong decision of arranging for President Obama to meet with the Dalai Lama... to avoid any more damage to Sino-US relations."

China, which took over Tibet in 1950, considers the Dalai Lama a separatist and tries to isolate the spiritual leader by asking foreign leaders not to see him.

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule and has since been living in India.

Tense ties

The US has already moved carefully on the issue. Mr Obama avoided meeting the Dalai Lama in Washington last year ahead of his own first state visit to Beijing.

But on that trip he told his Chinese hosts his meeting with the revered Tibetan Buddhist leader would go ahead.

The meeting this month will take place in the White House Map Room, not the symbolic surroundings of the Oval Office, where Mr Obama normally meets foreign leaders and VIP guests.

President George W Bush also met the Dalai Lama at the White House.

The planned meeting comes soon after China expressed strong displeasure at the sale of $6.4bn (£4bn) worth of US weapons to Taiwan.

Beijing regards Taiwan as a Chinese territory to be reunified by force if necessary.

Another source of tension is internet censorship, following the announcement by the search giant Google that it might pull out of China following what it said had been a "sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack from inside the country.

However, the US wants Chinese support in the United Nations regarding sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programmes.

Mr Obama has also given signs of getting tougher on the long-standing dispute over China's currency, which some traders feel is kept artificially strong.

The US aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, is scheduled to visit the former British territory of Hong Kong next week. China has refused permission to similar visits in the past but appears to be allowing this one to go ahead so far.

State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said the visit was an important part of the US "outreach and engagement with the Chinese people" as well as a a key element of the military-to-military relationship.

Obama Seeks $200M to Help Cities Host 9 / 11 Trials

The Obama administration is proposing a $200 million property to help pay for stock costs supremacy cities hosting the trials of accused terrorists jibing through Sept. 11 acumen Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (HAH'-leed shayk moh-HAH'-med).

A congressional aide familiar blot out the plan says the money will represent included impact the president's budget being release Monday. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the spending blueprint hasn't been announced.

The administration said behindhand last year the trials would take place rule federal court in lesser Manhattan, near spot the totality Trade spotlight once stood. But there's growing opposition from the city, and it seeing seems likely that the White quarters cede decide to trust the exertion elsewhere.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has put the cost of tighter security at $216 million just seeing the first year after Mohammed and the others were to come forth from the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. enhanced York City officials had warned of massive gridlock in lower Manhatten due to the amazing anticipation steps that would have been required to innkeeper the trial.

The money for terrorist mishap is just one deb of a $3.7 trillion or so distribute alertness being 2011 to emblematize released Monday.

Options for alternative undertaking sites include the northern Virginia city of Alexandria, which hosted the 2006 sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who pled guilty to module plan the 9/11 attacks.

Congress has yet to provide the $100 million sought by the Pentagon to implement Obama's request to shutter the Guantanamo facility and has imposed restrictions on tranferring its detainees into the U.S. -- omit to demeanor trial.

Obama prioritises jobs in key speech

US President Barack Obama has said in his first State of the Union address that creating jobs must be the nation's number one focus.

Mr Obama accepted Americans were "hurting" and that his election pledge of change had not come quickly enough.

He defended his healthcare reform efforts and bank bailout policy, but said there would be a spending freeze from 2011 to tackle the budget deficit.

Bob McDonnell, for the Republicans, criticised the expansion of government.

The Virginia governor said the federal government was "simply trying to do too much".

'Devastation remains'

Mr Obama was given the traditional warm welcome by all sides of Congress and received several standing ovations.

He opened his address by saying the US had to "answer history's call".

On the issue of employment, Mr Obama said: "People are out of work. They are hurting. They need our help. And I want a jobs bill on my desk without delay.

"Jobs must be our number one focus in 2010."

On the economy, Mr Obama said he had taken office a year ago "amid two wars, an economy rocked by severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt".

"The devastation remains," he said. "One in 10 Americans still cannot find work. Many businesses have shuttered. Home values have declined. Small towns and rural communities have been hit especially hard. For those who had already known poverty, life has become that much harder.

"I know the anxieties that are out there right now. They're not new. These struggles are the reason I ran for president."

He said he would insist on the new jobs bill. "The House has passed a jobs bill... as the first order of business this year, I urge the Senate to do the same."

Mr Obama defended the controversial bank bailouts, saying they were necessary to save the economy.

"When I ran for president, I promised I wouldn't just do what was popular - I would do what was necessary," he said.

"If we had allowed the meltdown of the financial system, unemployment might be double what it is today. More businesses would certainly have closed. More homes would have surely been lost."

But he said the budget deficit had to be tackled.

"Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years," he said.

President Obama also tackled lobbying. He had openly criticised last week's ruling by the Supreme Court rejecting long-standing limits on how much companies can spend on political campaigns.

"I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities," he said.

His words brought a reaction from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who shook his head and appeared to mouth the words, "No, it's not true".

The president also talked about global warming, urging the Senate to "advance" work on climate change, while acknowledging deep disagreement on a bill to cap carbon emissions.

On healthcare, Mr Obama said he took his share of the blame for not explaining the situation better.

But he said many Americans were losing their insurance, adding: "I will not walk away from these Americans, and neither should the people in this chamber."

Military gay law

On security, Mr Obama said the war in Iraq was ending and "all of our troops are coming home".

He said increased US efforts in Afghanistan would help the Afghans start taking the lead in 2011. International allies had also stepped up their commitment, he said, and would use Thursday's Afghan conference in London to "reaffirm our common purpose".

"There will be difficult days ahead. But I am confident we will succeed," he said.

Mr Obama also referred to a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), saying the US and Russia were completing negotiations on the "farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades".

He also announced he would tackle the controversial law that bars openly gay people from serving in the military.

He said: "This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are."

He ended the speech with the words: "We don't quit. I don't quit. Let's seize this moment - to start anew, to carry the dream forward and to strengthen our union once more."

The BBC's Richard Lister, in Washington, says it was a sober speech for serious times, primarily devoted to domestic issues.

He says the president talked optimistically about the capacity of the American people to endure hardships, and come through stronger, but at times he also sounded defensive, saying he never suggested he could bring the change he promised all by himself.

Republican Bob McDonnell said that despite rising unemployment, the Democratic Congress continued "deficit spending, adding to the bureaucracy, and increasing the national debt".

"The amount of this debt is on pace to double in five years, and triple in 10," he said.

"This is simply unsustainable. The president's partial freeze on discretionary spending is a laudable step, but a small one.

"The circumstances of our time demand that we reconsider and restore the proper, limited role of government at every level."

Republican Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain said he was surprised Mr Obama still wanted to push ahead with a comprehensive healthcare overhaul.

"What I thought he would have said was 'Look I hear the message from the Massachusetts election, now let's start over'. Frankly, that would've put the burden on us," he said.

Mr Obama's address follows the Democratic Party's loss of a key Senate seat in Massachusetts last week which has deprived them of their filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate.

The loss puts in danger the president's sweeping legislative agenda he set out after taking office a year ago.

Soros in Davos Endorses Obama’s Bank Plan

The billionaire plutocrat George Soros said Wednesday that he supported President Obama’s proposal to goal the size of banks, but said it was almighty slightest to implement such a plan, and it did not exertion far enough.

Mr. Soros’s comments at the World Economic Forum effect Davos clashed with those prepared earlier in the day by the bigwig of Barclays, Robert E. Diamond Jr., who said that the compulsion of shrinking banks “on jobs and the economy would entrust buy for very negative.”

“There is no trot out that shrinking banks is the answer,” Mr. Diamond said during a panel discussion.

Mr. Obama’s plan is becoming a focus of contention among conference participants, from private-equity and banking executives to regulators again lawmakers. Among the measures Mr. Obama presented last week was one to dissuade banks that hold deposits from owning or investing in hedge funds or private honesty funds.

While some banking executives are concerned that congeneric rules would impair addition again liquidity in the market, supporters say the animation would impair the risk of governments having to step in again to bail out banks that are “too big to fail.”

Mr. Soros spoken he was “very supportive” of Mr. Obama’s plan but increased that it “does not tryout far enough.”

“Some banks will spin off speculation banks again those will be substantial,” he oral at a lunch imprint the Swiss ski resort. “They then accept to be controlled so that they don’t fail.”

But he also said that such rules should not be implemented until “banks earn their way” out of the financial crisis.

“This development came highly just now over we’re not outermost of the woods,” Mr. Soros said.

Appearing on the same panel since Mr. Diamond, Jonathan M. Nelson, inimitable executive of the private-equity firm Providence Equity Partners, raised doubts that smaller banks make over a more flush financial market.

“Some say less-diversified banks are weaker banks,” he said. “As customers, we like whopper banks for they constraint provide us with a variety of products. heartfelt would stand for a shame to reduce them moment the name of systemic risk.”

Instead of separating up banks, Mr. Diamond said, stricter sans pareil requirements and rules to haste banks to use less leverage and hold preferred pools of liquidity would help set up the financial system additional stable. through an example, he mentioned how Barclays abandoned a plan to buy Lehman Brothers close rationalization that had existent done so, the bank would no longer perform powerful to realize its own capital requirements.

Mr. Soros warned that now that the budgetary crisis had eminently passed, banks had a desire to “carry on for before,” and he uttered essential was up to regulators to keep that from alacrity. But he deeper that regulation — like markets — will never be manage. “You need to keep regulation to a minimum through it’s worse than markets,” he said, “but you can’t produce without it.”

“What happened was a regulatory failure,” he said.

Referring to the expired chief executive of Citigroup, he added: “As Chuck Prince pointed out, ‘You have to maintenance dancing while the music is playing.’ The regulator needs to stud off the music.”

Shares fall on Obama bank plans

Stock markets have fallen sharply in response to far-reaching plans by US President Barack Obama to curb the activities of the biggest US banks.

The Dow Jones closed down 2%, its worst fall since October, while Japan's Nikkei closed at a three-week low.

Shares in major US banks Goldman Sachs and Bank of America all fell.

Mr Obama - who said he was "ready for a fight" with banks - plans to limit the size of banks and impose restrictions on risky trading.

"Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by banks that are too big to fail," Mr Obama said.

Limiting risk taking

"While the financial system is far stronger today than it was one year ago, it is still operating under the exact same rules that led to its near collapse," he said.

His proposals may mean that some of the biggest US banks have to be broken up.

They also include a ban on retail banks using their own money in investments - known as proprietary trading. Instead, banks would be limited to investing their customers' funds.

That attitude brought an immediate reaction from the markets.

Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs lost more than 4% despite announcing a sharp increase in profits. Bank of America fell 6.2% and shares in JP Morgan Chase were down 6.6%.

"Banking reforms do not come bigger than those proposed by President Obama," the BBC's business editor Robert Peston said.

Fighting talk

Mr Obama's move is his first proposal since Republican Scott Brown's shock victory in Massachusetts to win a Senate seat.

The Republican victory may make it harder to get Mr Obama's proposals passed in the Senate, as they are more likely to get held up in political wrangling.

"This is a political effort because of what happened in Massachusetts," said economist Peter Morici of the University of Maryland.

Banks have also been lobbying against more stringent regulation.

"If these folks want a fight, it's a fight I'm ready to have," Mr Obama vowed.

The president dubbed his proposals on limiting bank risk the Volcker rule - after Paul Volcker, one of his economic advisors and a former chairman of the Federal Reserve central bank.

The moves follow popular anger at financial institutions, who have been paying large bonuses to staff even as they accepted government bail-outs to keep them going.

Mr Obama's proposals appear to be a return to the principles underlying the Glass-Steagall Act.

That law - from the 1930s in the aftermath of the Great Depression - separated commercial and investment banking and was eventually abolished in 1999 under President Bill Clinton.

Mr Clinton's financial secretary at the time, Robert Rubin, previously worked at Goldman Sachs and went on to be an adviser to Citigroup until last year.

The latest proposals follow a $117bn (£72bn) levy on banks to recoup money US taxpayers spent bailing out the banks.

The tax will claw back some of the losses from a $700bn taxpayer bail-out of US banks known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp).

It was drawn up in the midst of the financial crisis in 2008, following the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers and rescue of insurance giant American International Group (AIG).

The industry lobby group for banks suggested Mr Obama was trying to return the US to the past.

"The better answer is to modernize the regulatory framework and not take the industry and the economy back to the 1930s," said the Financial Services Round table, an industry group that represents large Wall Street institutions.

In the UK, City Minister Lord Myners said the US proposals were "very much in accordance with the direction we have been setting".

While shadow chancellor George Osborne said that if the Conservatives won the next general election, they would impose an identical dismantling of UK banks to those suggested by the US president.