Obama Delivers Message of Hope

His oratory is phenomenal.  The President's speech, about an hour long, highlighted not only what needs to be done immediately to keep credit flowing and assist the ailing auto industry, but also showcased his budget priorities.  Those priorities are renewable energy, health care reform, and education.  At the same time he told Congress to reduce the deficit.  Obama talked about elimination of waste in government and reform of antiquated programs.  Follow this link for the full text of President Obama's address.  The showcase line delivered by the President was:

"But while our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before."

The budget and priorities will be debated, and hopefully legislation will be enacted quickly to advance renewable energy, reform health care delivery and improve education.  With that said, however, there is still serious disagreement as to the short term tactics to handle the economic crisis.  The issue is not the flow of credit to individuals and small businesses, but whether we have the capacity to borrow more without repaying the debts we previously incurred.  When people have gorged themselves on all forms of credit available at the buffet they stop eating until they digest their food.  Restaurants do not force them to eat more than they need or before they are ready.  No matter what we do with the banking system, responsible borrowers need to clean up their balance sheet before we begin borrowing anew.  Responsible lenders will not extend credit when the risk of default is great.  Returning to the practices that got us into the problem is not the solution.  Create a new banking system that can lend to borrowers without regard to bad loans on its books.  Stop the bleeding of the insolvent banks.  That will get us out of this situation, 

 

The President's otherwise wonderful speech was unfortunately marred by a few partisan snipes aimed at the Bush administration that he could not resist delivering. While most of his comments were met with bipartisan standing ovations, only the Democrats stood and applauded his partisanship.  In addition he gave credit to America for inventing the automobile.  Hopefully our German friends wont take much umbridge at the sleight to Daimler, Maybach and Benz.  Nevertheless, his comments were well received and hopefully will set the tone for some real budget cutting and reform.