Sep. 14--Start lending again, don't count on any more bailouts, and stop the greed.

They were at the core of President Barack Obama's message to financial chiefs and lawmakers on Monday at Federal Hall in the heart of Wall Street.

"Hear my words: We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses," Obama said.

That appetite led to a financial crisis that gripped the San Gan Gabriel Valley and Whittier areas even before Lehman Brothers' collapse touched off a panic a year ago.

A year later, still hurting But despite Wall Street's recent surge, huge bank bailouts, Obama's proposed regulatory reforms and last year's collapse is still being felt from Wall Street to Churrolandia Bakery and The Funnel Cake Factory in Whittier. That's where Norma Nielsen struggles to keep her business afloat.

Over the year, she's had to keep cutting -- shortening hours, chopping services. She just shut down the bakery portion of her business to focus on only cakes. And she can't get a loan to help finance the business.

"The banks are keeping all that stimulus money," she said. "It's really bad...and they are closing lines of credit."

With no financing, slow demand and no one willing to invest in the business..."I'm just stuck," she said.

On Monday, Obama implored banks to start lending again, in light of the $787 billion bank bailout -- the Troubled Asset Relief Program -- that institutions received a year ago.

"I want to urge you to...help small business owners who desperately need loans and who are bearing the brunt of the decline in available credit," he told his audience on Monday. "To help communities that would benefit from the financing you could provide, or the community development institutions you could support."

But Nielsen isn't as confident as she was a year ago about how long she can hold on, she said.

She's not the only one.

The meltdown led to a housing debacle, high unemployment and a credit freeze that is taking longer than hoped to thaw out. Such forces have claimed many victims. Local businesses were no exception.

In fact, locally, the collapse and responses to it started before Lehman's meltdown.

IndyMac, the Pasadena-based thrift, collapsed July 11 under the weight of billions in failed Alt-A loans made to borrowers who's incomes or assets weren't verified.