In January of 2006, an ambitious Barack Obama stood at the podium of the Lobbying Reform Summit in Washington, DC. He spoke of the revolutionary president Theodore Roosevelt’s opposition to a political system dominated by robber barons, railroad tycoons and oil magnates. By the act of bribing politicians, massive portions of the economy were shifted into the hands of the few.

“Today, we face a similar crisis of corruption,” Obama said, “and I believe that we deserve similar leadership from those in power as well.”

After eight years of tax cuts for the wealthy and a rising American debt deficit, Obama was preaching to the choir. We were all ready for another Roosevelt; many of us thought Obama was going to fill this role.

On the night Obama was officially elected, I was walking down Massachusetts Street to watch his speech at a local restaurant. Students drove their cars wildly with Obama’s campaign flags flapping. Many people hung out the windows of the cars and yelled at the top of their lungs. I shared their enthusiasm for changes coming to Washington.

Now, more than a year after American International Group Inc., Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Washington Mutual and others became insolvent, sending the world economy spiraling into recession and leaving one in ten U.S. citizens unemployed, there could not be a better time to increase financial regulation that has become shamefully lax.

Yet, Obama’s early ambitions to reverse legislations catering to corporate interests linger unfulfilled; we are all paying dearly.

The flooding of federal money and the consequent 2009 surge in the stock market may replace fears of another depression with complacency for Americans. However, this current condition may also prove to be temporary if the administration and House do not legislate the necessary changes to discourage exploitive practices by Wall Street executives.

The level of abusive practices in an unregulated free-for-all market came as a shock to everyone. Perhaps the most well known was Bernie Madoff, who pled guilty to 11 felonies after officials discovered that his wealth management firm was defrauding thousands of investors in a massive Ponzi Scheme.

Ultimately, Madoff’s firm was responsible for $65 billion in missing investments and nearly $18 billion in loses for his investors. With out the proper market regulations, individuals will continue to stoop to astoundingly low levels to gain wealth at the expensive of others.

Fraudulent actions like Madoff’s Ponzi scheme certainly cannot be tolerated in a healthy market. Yet, inherently, there are many systematic problems that can rise as investment firms use some of the brightest minds in the world in coming up with ways to increase profits.

Issues such as investments firms growing too large—a prominent criticism by many economists who witnessed the domino-like demise of one financial firm to the next because each controlled astonishingly massive portions of the market—continue to go unanswered.

In addition to size, there have been few changes in the markets of derivative securities. Many believe the opaque and extremely complex nature of these systems is one of the leading causes of the 2008 market crash.

With the largest drop in the stock market since the Great Depression and its continually precarious condition, any government body interested in protecting its citizens would act to control those responsible. However, the very people who gambled with, and lost, billions of investor’s dollars continue to be at large and conducting business as usual.

In fact, employee compensation on Wall Street firms rose during the past year. In one example, during the first three quarters of 2009, Goldman Sachs set aside an astounding $16.7 billion for paychecks and bonuses, despite having received $10 billion in federal funds months earlier.

Meanwhile, banks sitting comfortably with federal money refuse to approve loans for local development. Just down the street from my home in Kansas City, a commercial shopping center that would have provided needed jobs to the local community has halted construction. Its unfinished structure sits on top of a massive man-made hill. Undoubtedly, this served as a million-dollar blow to developers.

Millions of people’s lives have been dramatically affected by economic recession. The idea that public opinion matters in U.S. government continues to be an illusion as financial firms enjoy record profits while the rest of us pay both in taxes and a poorly performing market.

Obama still has time to prove he is capable of making necessary changes to financial institutions; however, it does seem that time flies, even when you’re down and out.

— Katz is an Overland Park junior in political science and creative writing.