Last night (Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2009) as Barack answered questions and delivered his message, I was positively surprised at a few of the priorities of his goals. In the middle of his talk, he delivered a three point message:
1. Employ 4 million people through this stimulus package. “I think my initial measure of success is creating or saving 4 million jobs. That’s bottom line number one, because if people are working, then they’ve got enough confidence to make purchases, to make investments.” In our opinion this is spot on, and very economic and market friendly.
2. Free the credit markets and get money flowing again. “Are we seeing the credit markets operate effectively? I can’t tell you how many businesses that I talk to that are successful businesses, but just can’t get credit. Part of the problem in Elkhart, that I heard about today, was the fact that — this is the RV capital of America. You’ve got a bunch of RV companies that have customers who want to purchase RVs, but even though their credit is good, they can’t get the loan. Now, the businesses also can’t get loans to make payments to their suppliers. But when they have consumers, consumers can’t get the loans that they need. So normalizing the credit markets is I think step number two.” I was happily surprised at the priority of this step, and again feel this is a very market and economic friendly statement.
3. Stabilize housing prices. “Step number three is going to be housing: Have we stabilized the housing market? Now, the federal government doesn’t have complete control over that, but if our plan is effective, working with the Federal Reserve Bank, working with the FDIC, I think what we can do is stem the rate of foreclosure and we can start stabilizing housing values over time.” We can all debate the reasons we are having problems in the housing market, but no one can debate that we are; as you have seen in many of our posts, stabilization is a necessity to moving forward.
Overall grade of speech, A+. Please do not forget our important word, Patience! JK