By Li Hong, People's Daily Online

The world remains skittish 13 months after the meltdown of Wall Street, not just for the depth of recession and fiscal holes brought about by the financial crisis, by also for the lingering trepidation that the broken system hasn't been stitched up, and the nightmarish trouble could come back impaling us again.

As the bankers and traders are scouring the horizon for new fortunes, the Obama administration and U.S. Congress are still mired in the water as to what legislative moves should be taken. To make things worse, the powerful bankers are lobbying hard and collaborating with their cronies in the Capitol to disable any new regulation.

Till today, many lenders in America turn back to consumers' request for altering mortgage rates, partly explaining why foreclosures are kept rising though the economy has shown signs of improvement.

Many months ago, U.S. President Obama proposed the creation of a consumer credit watchdog, Consumer Financial Protection Agency, to protect individual credit users from being swiped by the cunning lenders. Property experts complain that millions of consumers who should have qualified for traditional fixed-rate mortgages were lured to signing sub-prime loans in the past years, which possibly contributed to the evolution of the financial debacle.

It is important for the regulators to set basic rules about financial product disclosure, because ordinary borrowers are not credit savvy and cannot tell true meanings of a product description buried in incomprehensible fine print.

For example, the average credit-card contract in the United States, running as long as 30 pages, is very misleading, making consumers dizzying prior to making a right choice. Faced with legalese and obfuscation, consumers can hardly compare lenders' offers and make a clear choice about borrowing. Reckless lending and borrowing are most likely to damage the soundness of bank business, leading to uncontrollable piling of bad loans.

Once the consumer credit watchdog is legislated and phased in, like the advent of Food and Drug Administration six decades ago which sets rules on medicines and remedies, the agency would be given broad power to stop financial products and practices that are unfair, deceptive and abusive. The agency will act as a rock to support the traditionally weak position of consumers, who often are at a disadvantage dealing with the mighty bankers.

Besides, U.S. regulators should be armed with a law to oversee the financial industry's harmful innovations –various forms of derivatives -- and stop outsize risky products. Management of excessive risk-taking by traders, especially those too-big-to-fail institutions, must be strengthened.

The big banks in the United States, becoming even bigger and more powerful since the financial crisis after taking in smaller troubled counterparts, obviously do not favor new legislation prone to hurt their bottom lines. They will take all efforts to throttle any regulation. So, real reform of American financial system is afar, and consumers still face an uphill battle against the titans.