Obama: Economic crisis 'not as bad as we think'

Wooo whooo folks,

Trillions of dollars?

What crisis?

WASHINGTON (AP) - Confronting misgivings, even in his own party, President Barack Obama mounted a stout defense of his blueprint to overhaul the economy Thursday, declaring the national crisis is "not as bad as we think" and his plans will speed recovery.

Challenged to provide encouragement as the nation's "confidence builder in chief," Obama said Americans shouldn't be whipsawed by bursts of either bad or good news and he was "highly optimistic" about the long term.

The president's proposals for major health care, energy and education changes in the midst of economic hard times faced skepticism from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, as senators questioned his budget outlook and the deficits it envisions in the middle of the next decade.

But Obama, speaking to top executives of the Business Roundtable, expressed an optimistic vision and called for patience.

Richard Parsons, chairman of beleaguered Citigroup Inc., asked if Obama could offer some help in a national battle "between confidence and fear."

"A smidgen of good news and suddenly everything is doing great. A little bit of bad news and ooohh , we're down on the dumps," Obama said. "And I am obviously an object of this constantly varying assessment. I am the object in chief of this varying assessment."

www.breitbart.com...

eeehaaaaa doing happy dance

Not only that,

Citi doesn't need more government capital: Parsons

www.reuters.com...

What a relief.

nymag.com...

Cool, now I can go back to talking about aliens.

The damage control team is in full gear to bring confidence to the angry people.

Occurs you will not find the president talking about bad news anymore, after all the bad news were just for the raping and screwing of the tax payer before the bail outs and the stimulus.

Now that the government gave the power to the Federal Reserve to used tax payer money in any way they want as long as the financial will not fail is not reason why keep telling the population bad news.

With all those trillions of dollars that we as tax payers have to carry in our backs the news better be good.

So for now on expect only good news coming from the markets and bad news only when the President needs to ask the tax payer to bend more because another stimulus is needed.

reply to post by marg6043


Hi Marg

So for now on expect only good news coming from the markets and bad news only when the President needs to ask the tax payer to bend more because another stimulus is needed

Nice, I guess Obama can't use the,"I inherited this," quote any longer,

yippie we are saved.

By Megan Davies and Walden Siew

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Private equity company Blackstone Group LP (BX.N) CEO Stephen Schwarzman said on Tuesday that up to 45 percent of the world's wealth has been destroyed by the global credit crisis.

"Between 40 and 45 percent of the world's wealth has been destroyed in little less than a year and a half," Schwarzman told an audience at the Japan Society. "This is absolutely unprecedented in our lifetime."

unprecedented?

Hmmm tell Obama.

45 percent of world's wealth destroyed: Blackstone CEO

He must think we are total idiots,

Well he could be right.
www.reuters.com...

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Dont get it... he says we will have some tough times ahead of us in the short term regardless of what he does and yet the rightwing fringe proclaims his a "fear mongerer" and then they go ahead and reference fox news and alex jones over dooms day scenarios..... then Obama brings confidence over the long term and over his own plan... which I think is important, and now his "totally down playing the economy" and yet we had GOP members and even conservatives who dont consider themselves republican any longer who had no issue saying "what recession?" not too long ago... oh but wait wasnt Bush in the whitehouse those times??

The rightwing are lost and are obviously trying to be on all defenses and attacks while distracting the issues facing their own ideology... and their evident confusion over support for the last 8years... atleast if your going to bicker about Obama be consistant.


[edit on 12-3-2009 by Southern Guardian]

reply to post by Southern Guardian


Well they said he was being to negative.

Somebody make up my mind.

Well, Obama was being negative, but now he sees that is not how Lincoln and FDR went about it. They spoke up positively, as did Ronald Reagan. If Obama will stay positive that will be good, psychologically for the country. But if he decides to speak to a black organization and tell them all is doom and gloom for black people, like he did last week, and then a few days later spoke to a Hispanic group and told them all is doom and gloom for them and they are getting hit the hardest, jusl like he told the black folks. then he needs to make up his mind. Either tell the truth to all, or lie to us all. Just be positive is all I am saying. It works wonders. You know the saying I suppose, "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar". Or something like that. Not sure why anyone would want to collect flies. lol. But I suppose it all has something to do with those fly strips I put up in my garage every spring and summer that have a sweet flavor to them and then the flies get caught on them in the sticky stuff and they starve to death, while I thank gawd there are less flies bothering me.

3 WEEKS AGO -

Obama was definitely fear mongering in the weeks leading up to the mysterious passage of the stimulus bill. Ask Wall Street about Obama's comments. The market tanked after every major speech that Obama gave on the economic state.

Would it be totally plausible to think that Barry was told to create the panic atmosphere so the bill would pass. He was campaigning for the bill for pete's sake.

Suddenly, now that the bill is moving on, all is getting better by the day. I think we are seeing the markets beginning to correct themselves. This is normal and should be allowed to occur. I think that little snake named Barry is trying to take credit for a couple days of Market Spikes and promising forecasts. But, for the next market fall, he'll simply blame the PAST administration.

How about filling all of the vacancies in the Treasury Office so they can get cracking on this economy. What is the hold up??

President Barack Obama’s handy excuse for all sorts of goofs and missteps is that he’s too busy working on fixing the economy. In order to do that, one might expect that Obama would concentrate on building his economic team at the Department of the Treasury, where most of those efforts would originate and get managed. Instead, as noted earlier today, phones go unanswered at Treasury — and our allies and trading partners have begun complaining about the lack of effort in the White House.

From that, we know that more than four dozen positions remain unfilled — positions that Geithner has to fill himself. But what about positions that the White House has to appoint? I researched that question this morning, and found the list of positions at Treasury that require White House appointment and Senate confirmation.

It’s quite a list: * Secretary * Deputy Secretary * Under Secretary — Domestic Finance * Under Secretary — International Affairs * Under Secretary — Terrorism and Financial Intelligence * Assistant Secretary — Economic Policy * Assistant Secretary — Financial Markets * Assistant Secretary (Deputy Under Secretary) — International Affairs * Assistant Secretary (Deputy Under Secretary) — Legislative Affairs * Assistant Secretary — Management and Chief Financial Officer * Assistant Secretary — Public Affairs/Director — Policy Planning * Assistant Secretary — Tax Policy * Chief Counsel — Internal Revenue Service/Assistant General Counsel for Tax * Commissioner — Internal Revenue (five-year terms of office) * General Counsel * Inspector General * Inspector General — Tax Administration * Treasurer — United States

hotair.com...

Hello!! in this economy Barry should have no problem finding ready and able workers to fill these spots. All of those positions have to be filled by the White House and can't be appointed by the tax cheat Geitner. Obama says that the economy is Job #1 and yet 50 days into his job and we still have all of those vacant positions. The only position filled by the White House in the Treasury dept. is Geitner's. That's it. Geitner must have been the last person at the bottom of the barrel.

Ok Ok, this guy Obama is officially full of it. Spinster, liar, punk, and a terrorist. Thanks Obama for bowing to your corporate cronies. I hope you're getting rich for selling us out.


This guy is no better than Bush

I think he's pretending to be Mousilini now.....
in case I mispelled it and you have no idea who I am talking about, I am talking about the Italian dictator during the great depression...
he was a dictator, so he could do just about whatever he wanted. when the banks in his country ran into trouble, he sat with them behind closed doors and basically told them that he would give them all the money that they needed, if they would only not give a clue to the people just how bad things were. from the stories I heard, it did work somewhat. the people had no clue that the banks were getting massive infusions from the state and well, therefore didn't have any reservations about their deposits, their spending ect.

So...if the economic crisis is "not as bad as we think," does that mean the porkulus bill will be rescinded immediately and that we'll get back all the money we gave to Citi, AIG, and the other financial institutions we've bailed out thus far?

I'll be waiting for the money to start rolling in to the US' coffers. Should be along any day now.

reply to post by kyred


How is it you know the fly strips are "sweet"?

The money has flowed so quickly the last few months, it is difficult to keep up with it all.

Everyone that has received funds is going to be saying whatever... to stay in good graces with the gravy train.

I won't trust any of the positive rhetoric for a while yet...

Well I wish someone would have told the three (or more, pegged three) IDIOTS who thought they where gonna do a break in on me when my hub left for poker last night. Some how I doubt they heard the speech! Frankly they where desperate enough for money to get a 357 super mag in there face cocked and ready to fire if they sneezed!
I am getting so tired of all of these lies coming from "inside" the government and huge companies. They are doing nothing other than destroying our economy and all the trust people have in anything. Even if we where really on the mend no one is going to believe it at this point. They have lied one to many times about it and robbed everyone of their futures.The prez going on tv and telling people all is well when millions are still out of work homeless and hungry is just a poke in the eye!

I do kind of find it kind of amazing that all these banks that were in such dire straights while bush was in office that hey, if we didn't open up the tap and let the tax monies flow to them there'd be a massive collaspe of the entire system in days....well, once Obama came in and started tying some strings onto that money, all of a sudden these banks are just peachy and turning a profit!
kind of looks a tad bit suspicious to me!!! kind of like well, ya know, they never needed the money to begin with, bush was just giving them a nice parting gift!

What does he care?

He already has our money............and our childrens money.............and our grandchildrens money.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


That was true and he was right to be negative but remember that is because he was in the defensive due to the fact that the economy in decline was not solely his fault.

But then again he is the president and he does enjoy popularity right now.

For many people what ever he says is the law.

So he had to play now the confident president in order to appease his followers and the nation as a whole.

Yesterday he was very busy and the news also he appeared about 4 times in the news giving speeches.

That is quite a schedule for any president to be in the public eye so often.

No wonder he is so popular the media helps a lot to that.

Well, I guess it didn't take him long to change his tune. Only a few weeks ago, he was saying this:

Obama: Economy Faces Catastrophe without Stimulus

"If we do not move swiftly to sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, an economy that is already in crisis will be faced with catastrophe," Obama said.

I guess its officially amateur hour at the White House now. I especially love this line at the end:

"We are not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin," he said.

So, Barack, how does that statement mesh with the fact that your administration is going to run a deficit close to $2 trillion this year??? Hypocrite.

[edit on 13-3-2009 by vor78]