Today Sen. Barack Obama outlined his most extensive policy response to the US’s growing financial crisis to date. His approach is very comprehensive in linking the mortgage meltdown to a larger problem of financial deregulation and oversight as well as a larger credit bubble.

Missing in most conventional approaches to the mortgage crisis is an acknowledgment of the need for a regulatory response. Missing in Obama’s speech was an understanding of the severity of the problem, running into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Overall, his economic team’s ability to digest these complex moving parts and develop a comprehensive strategy to tackling the problem is quite heartening if he becomes President. We should expect that the mortgage crisis will last well into the next presidency.

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• The U.S. financial system is effectively insolvent
• Subprime housing bubble timeline
• Obama White House: Add Larry Summers and Robert Gibbs