For too long, rather than engaging in constructive debate, Democrats and Republicans have mocked one another.

This has worked out badly for all of us. It has undermining our sense of common purpose. It has lead us to rash, unbalanced decisions from both sides of the aisle, rammed through without proper debate.

In his speech on financial regulation, Obama works to break free of the Democratic vs. Republican rut and move to a bipartisan consensus on restoring free and transparent markets, which are the best way to promote the common good.

Americans have pursued their dreams within a free market that has been the engine of America’s progress…

But the American experiment has worked in large part because we have guided the market’s invisible hand with a higher principle. Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it.

That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair, and open, and honest. We have done this not to stifle – but rather to advance prosperity and liberty…

The core of our economic success is the fundamental truth that each American does better when all Americans do better; that the well being of American business, its capital markets, and the American people are aligned. 

I think all of us here today would acknowledge that we’ve lost that sense of shared prosperity. 

Under Republican and Democratic Administrations, we failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices.

We let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales. 

The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady, sustainable growth; a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street, but ends up hurting both.

More excerpts below.

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