Obama's hidden message on fixing finance: It's not important

President Barack Obama's speech across the street from the New York Stock Exchange this afternoon sent a blazing -- but unintended -- message: fixing what ails Wall Street is not that important.

While Obama wants to withdraw Washington's support for Wall Street and urges Congress to pass his package of financial reforms, he's doing it almost as an after-thought to what is far more important to him -- reforming health care.

Today's speech was a day short of a year since Lehman Brothers' $693 billion bankruptcy. And if it were not for that near-anniversary, it would have been far better for Obama to have given that speech after his health care push had yielded a signed bill. To be fair, his defense of the actions that pulled the financial world back from the brink was both effective and timely.