This month marks the one-year anniversary of the crisis that nearly toppled global financial markets. And, by most measures, things have not changed much on Wall Street or in the nation's largest commercial banks, where risky investments in real estate precipitated a bubble and then a collapse in which billions of dollars of taxpayers' money was used to prevent a feared total collapse of the global financial system.

To be sure, many people in financial fields have lost their jobs. But most upper-level bankers and financiers are still in place, and some of the people most responsible for the crash walked away with million-dollar bonuses.

Though not much has changed, there are encouraging signs that change is coming in terms of limits on bankers' compensation and better monitoring of risk by regulators.

President Barack Obama made a speech on Wall Street last week that hit all the right notes, scolding bankers for the risky behavior that led to the financial crisis. He derided the culture of greed and short-term rewards that encouraged complex and risky deals, and he urged Congress to respond with new regulations and compensation plans.

Obama said all the right things, but there's a risk that it was just talk, and that Washington officials, from the White House to Congress, are too close to Wall Street to get tough.

None of the CEOs of the top banks attended Obama's speech, suggesting they are not worried about Washington changing the culture of greed that was characterized by "heads I win, tails you lose," when bankers are paid multimillion-dollar bonuses when risky bets work, but they get bailed out by taxpayers when the bets turn sour.

Just as troubling as the culture of greed is the idea that many of these banks have been deemed too big to fail. If more banks had been allowed to fail after taking extraordinary risks, then bankers might rein in their risky behavior after seeing other bankers lose fortunes and jobs.

But navigating the financial crisis only has made the "too big to fail" issue worse, with larger banks having absorbed weakened competitors. Without no fear of failure, bankers will continue making risky bets to supercharge profits, knowing that the federal government will bail them out if things turn out badly.

Obama warned Wall Street there will be no more bailouts. But his words seem at odds with reality.

Failing to break up giant banks so that none is too big to fail, the only sensible alternative is tough new regulations that limit and restructure pay in ways that factor in risk and include "clawback" provisions that take back bonuses if company profits collapse due to bad bets made years earlier.

But just as health insurance companies and drug makers are using their clout to shape health care reform in ways that protect their profits, so are bankers fighting any restrictions on their pay or bonuses.

The Federal Reserve, America's central bank, is proposing new rules that would require banks to defer bonuses so that downside risks could be fully known before money is paid. The Fed plan also calls for it to review and approve pay for not only a few very senior bankers, as is now the case, but about 20,000 people at 5,000 bank holding companies.

Such a program would impact not only top earners at Wall Street banks, but also stock and bond traders and mortgage loan officers all across the country — most of the places where the roots of the latest financial crisis were found.

Some in Congress want to prevent the Federal Reserve from exercising this power, preferring another regulatory approach. There might be merit in consolidating federal regulators because leading up to the crisis, financial firms reportedly "shopped" different regulators, looking for the most lenient. That must end.

There is a fear, however, that debate over the mechanics of regulation is just a delaying tactic to stall — or kill — proposed pay limits and clawback provisions.

Obama said all the right things. But words don't matter, actions do. If nothing significant happens to reform how bankers and other financial employees are compensated, it will be clear that Wall Street's big campaign gifts and lobbying have had the desired effect in Washington — and the risk of another financial crisis remains.

It is deeply troubling to read newspaper headlines marking the anniversary of the financial meltdown that say little has changed in how bankers are compensated and multimillion-dollar bonuses are returning. Americans should watch for what restrictions are, or are not, placed on Wall Street's extravagant and risk-encouraging pay practices.

Congress and the president should not let health care reform or energy policy sideline this important issue. The damage caused by unchecked greed and no-consequence risk-taking is too great.