When discussing the biggest reform of financial regulation since the Depression, President Obama has been at pains to emphasise that he favours a “relatively light touch”. Yet in a television interview on Tuesday, he displayed precisely the opposite as he dispatched a fly that had been buzzing around his head.

He watched the insect in silence as it landed on top of his hand before swiftly killing it with the other. “Now, where were we?” he said, turning back to his interviewer. “That was pretty impressive, wasn’t it? I got the sucker.”

No one is yet suggesting that American capitalism will suffer the same fate. But Mr Obama has been irritated in recent weeks by accusations that he is a heavy-handed regulator, even a crypto-socialist. “Wall Street seems to maybe have a shorter memory about how close we were to the abyss than I would have expected,” he said.

“When I hear some of the commentary that’s been creeping up about — you know, ‘it’s time for government to get out of the economy. And what’s the Obama Administration doing?’ — I have to try to remind them that all we’re doing is cleaning up after the mess that was made.”

The proposals he announced yesterday will embed the US Government deeper in private markets, give the Federal Reserve more powers over big financial institutions, curb reckless risk-taking by forcing firms to raise more capital and meet higher liquidity standards, expose hedge funds to closer scrutiny and create a new agency to protect consumers and small investors.

The White House likens all these changes to a sensitive reconstruction of an old but fire-damaged building. Instead of bulldozing the site, it is seeking to restore creaking timbers, modernise it with smoke alarms and create some great big windows so that everyone knows what is happening inside.

On the Left, there will be many who say that the plan falls short of what is required. But Mr Obama appears more sensitive to criticism from the Right.

He told The Wall Street Journal that “the last thing I want is to . . . impinge on the dynamism of the free market”.

Mr Obama knows there is little tradition of European-style “enabling states” in American politics. Instead, the power of presidents has more usually been negative and destructive rather than positive and constructive. Just ask that dead fly.

Explore Economics

• Pre-Budget Report 2009

• Budget 2009

• World Economic Forum

• The Times MPC

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive