Barack Obama's speech on the financial crisis was a remarkable breakthrough.

Just days after delivering the speech of a generation in Philly, Obama spoke about economics at the Cooper Union here in NYC on Thursday. Here is what Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect had to say about it:

Barack Obama's speech on the financial crisis was a remarkable breakthrough.

First, he connected all the dots -- between the complete dismantling of financial regulation, the declining economic opportunity and security for ordinary people, the current financial meltdown, and the political influence of Wall Street as the driver of these changes. Astounding! I wish I had written the speech. It is this kind of leadership and truth-telling that is the predicate for the shift in public opinion required to produce legislative change. A radical, appropriately nuanced, and deeply public-minded description of what has occurred, the speech was Roosevelt quality: the president as teacher-in-chief. Those who felt that Obama was capable of real growth that will transcend the campaign's early and somewhat feeble domestic policy proposals should feel vindicated.

The speech also showed real understanding and subtlety in grasping how financial "innovation" had outrun regulation, as well as a historical sense of the abuses of the 1920s repeating themselves. Obama is one of the few mainstream leaders -- Barney Frank is another -- calling for capital requirements to be extended to every category of financial institution that creates credit. This is exactly what's needed to prevent the next meltdown, but if it were put to a vote now, it would be rejected by legislators from both parties because they are still in thrall to market fundamentalism and Wall Street. That's where presidential leadership comes in.

That someone of Kuttner's caliber (just Wiki him, you'll see what I mean) is awed by Obama's grasp of economic issues is in itself telling. He goes on to say this:

The Clinton camp's rejoinder -- that Hillary is proposing to do more for the victims of the housing bust -- is totally unpersuasive. All along, she has treated the housing mess as its own self-contained scandal, rather than connecting it to the larger set of financial bubbles of which it is a part. The Frank-Dodd bill, which Obama is co-sponsoring, is a realistic remedy for purely the housing part of the crisis. If you read Clinton's March 24 speech on the housing crisis and how to fix it -- supposedly more robust than Obama's remedy -- she offers the same Frank-Dodd bill. She does not locate the mortgage crisis in the deeper financial one. And her idea of turning, for wise men, to Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan -- more than anyone the people who gave us this crisis -- is appalling.

My sense is that Obama has a bit more of Edwards in him than you'd ever guess by the latter's stubborn fence-sitting, and that was borne out in the speech as well:

So the speech was courageous, in that it goes well beyond the current Democratic party consensus, and one can only wonder about the reaction of some of Obama's own financial backers. He also took on a couple of other sacred cows, such as electricity and telecom deregulation, proven failures to everyone but industry defenders and their allies in the economics profession.

And lest you think Kuttner is just stumping for Barack, let it be known:

Unlike some of my friends, I have not fallen in love with Obama. I have been at this too long, and you risk getting your heart broken. I actually shared Krugman's critique of Obama's health insurance individual mandate and his proposal to tax the upper middle class to pay for a much exaggerated Social Security shortfall that is more like a rounding error. I simply conclude, based on what I've seen, that Obama is capable of real learning and real transformation, both of himself and of public opinion. Nothing I've seen suggests that's true of Hillary Clinton.