"It is true that we have not dismantled the financial system, and in that sense, Bernie Sanders’s critique is correct," Obama said. "But one of the things that I’ve consistently tried to remind myself during the course of my presidency is that the economy is not an abstraction. It’s not something that you can just redesign and break up and put back together again without consequences."

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Obama's comments were an unusual rebuke from a sitting president directed at a major presidential candidate in the same party, and a reminder that the government's response to the financial crisis still divides Democrats bitterly, almost eight years later.

The Obama administration, together with independent federal regulators and Congress, imposed strict new rules on the financial system with the Dodd-Frank financial reform in 2010 and other policies. Among other things, these rules required banks to insure themselves by holding more capital, giving up profits for the sake of stability. Investors were required to trade derivatives in public exchanges, and banks were barred (at least on paper) from using their customers' federally insured deposits to make risky bets on Wall Street.

Liberal Democrats including Sanders have long argued that the measures aren't enough to prevent another financial crisis.

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His supporters point out that the largest banks have only become larger since the Dodd-Frank reform. Eric Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, presented data earlier this year showing that the assets controlled by the largest and most important banks had increased from about $6.5 trillion in 2010 to about $7.5 trillion today.

At the same time, the economy in general has been expanding, and even as those banks were getting bigger, so were other, smaller institutions. The share of the overall financial sector's assets controlled by the largest banks actually declined modestly over the same period, Rosengren's data showed.

In general, data from the Commerce Department shows that banks still account for less of the economy than they did before the crisis. The recession was especially bad for finance and insurance, and while the sector has recovered more quickly than the rest of the economy, Wall Street still hasn't caught up to other industries yet.

Meanwhile, the largest banks are holding more of their shareholders' capital as insurance against a crisis. Rosengren showed that the ratio of stock and other forms of capital to overall assets has improved at those organizations from about 7 percent in 2010 to 9 percent today. In case of another catastrophe, the banks' shareholders would have to put that money toward saving the bank. The hope is that taxpayers wouldn't be asked to contribute.

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"There is no doubt that the financial system is substantially more stable," Obama said.

Those who agree with Sanders counter that the administration and the lawmakers who put together the Dodd-Frank legislation can't take credit for these improvements. Regulators already had the authority to make some changes, and the Federal Reserve's decision to maintain interest rates close to zero has made banking less profitable.

Obama's harshest criticisms, however, were reserved for the Republican contenders.