Taken from the passage you cited Translation - We really didn't want to change a single thing about the way you guys do business, because it's good for every senator and congressman and the entire political ecosystem if you guys are stinking rich. The press says that it's your fault that everyone is broke (But we both know that's not true, wink wink nudge nudge) so we had to do SOMETHING or else the little people might have actually gotten upset enough to do something crazy like vote out their sitting senators and congressmen. Why was the contents of this speech a secret? Why was it politically potent for it to be leaked? Obama just spoke to bankers and to 'mature' people, that's not anything politically potent. Why does it matter? I asked for someone to actually tell the financier class 'Hey, guess what, we're bringing Glass-Steagall back because you guys literally couldn't stop stealing and making openly consumer-hostile decisions if your lives depended on it. Thanks for the check.'there was a lot of complaining about Dodd-Frank, but there was also a need to do something because for political reasons, if you were an elected member of Congress and people in your constituency were losing jobs and shutting businesses and everybody in the press is saying it's all the fault of Wall Street, you can't sit idly by and do nothing, but what you do is really important.