I want to recognize something that I don’t think the White House seems to understand, or maybe they do.  It’s always problematic to characterize these people because you really don’t know what they know, what they understand, because they are so inwardly focused.  I understand just how much fear there is in this country among people who have seen over half of everything they had saved vanish, and there is no indication that it is going to start building again.  The whole notion that the American dream of hard work, ambition, combined with dreams can make things possible, more and more people are losing belief in that, understandably so.  Not everybody is, but a lot of people are, more than you know.  There is palpable fear.

Let’s talk about elderly citizens first.  Some of them have only their Social Security, but others have more or had more.  They had retirement accounts, various places that their portfolio was diversified.  Whenever anybody’s portfolio was, however it was diversified, half of it’s gone in six months with no end in sight, and certainly no rebound in sight.  And people are wondering what to do.  Should they take their money out of the market?  They see everybody else shorting the market.

So people are wondering should they actually pull their money out, convert it to cash and put it in a safe somewhere?  There is fear of the banks not being solvent.  More banks in Georgia were shut down late last week or over the weekend.  It’s something that happens now with a predictable frequency.  And generally people are talking, “Where is the bottom going to be?”  Nobody can tell you where the bottom is going to be.

The president of the United States is not inspiring any confidence whatsoever. All of this economic tumult is really the result of a banking crisis with no effort to fix it.  There is no plan.

Geithner doesn’t know what he’s doing. He just got three assistants that were nominated to serve with him, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing.  There’s nobody in this administration inspiring confidence that there is an end in sight to this.  The only people being inspired are those who simply believe the words of Obama because he’s Obama, the same people that voted for him, because there’s certainly nothing of substance.

Last Friday, less than 90 minutes after Air Force One landed on the way back from Columbus, Ohio, President Obama called the New York Times about the interview he gave them earlier.

One of the things that he was upset about, they’d asked him about whether he was a socialist, and apparently his handlers thought that his answer wasn’t any good, because he says, (paraphrasing) “I’ve been thinking about this socialist thing that you guys at the New York Times asked me about, and I thought you were joking, but if you were serious, I want to give you a serious answer to this.”  Clearly the accusation that he’s a socialist is bothering him, and if you call a news agency back to try to set the record straight.

The New York Times reporter says,

“So who’s watch are we talking about here, sir, when it comes to this socialism business?”

OBAMA:

By the time we got here, there already had been an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system, and the thing I constantly try to emphasize to people is that if coming in the market was doing fine, nobody would be happier than me to stay out of it.

REPORTER:

Right.

OBAMA:

You know, I have more than enough to do without having to worry about the financial system.

Now, that’s an inspiring thing to say.  I have more than enough to do without having to worry about the financial system.  This does not inspire confidence among people who listen to what this man says.  This frightens them.

The dirty little secret is, Mr. President, we had stimulated the banks.

We stimulated Wall Street, and it didn’t work.  Aren’t we about out of time now?  Don’t we have enough evidence that these political solutions don’t work?

We bailed out General Motors.  Their auditors are talking about bankruptcy.

We bailed out Chrysler, ditto.

We bailed out banks, they continue to go south, they continue to lose their share price.

Anything that they have touched, anything the US government’s bailed out is not working: AIG, Citibank, Citigroup, whatever, any of these banks, the vast majority of them, not all, continue to have trouble.

All of this stimulus, quote, unquote, is not stimulating, it’s not causing confidence.  It’s not creating confidence, it’s not causing a rebound, it’s not causing an uptick in any market indicator.

And the president says,

“You know, I have more than enough to do without having to worry about the financial system.”

Mr. President, the financial system is all there is right now to people.

The financial system is the root of every other failure that’s going on here, from the housing to the car industry to wherever you want to look.

OBAMA:

What I — I don’t think people should do is to suddenly stuff money in their mattresses and pull back, you know, completely from spending.  I don’t think that people should be fearful about our future.

You don’t think people should be fearful about the future? Well, they are.  They are because they’re losing it.  They are losing their future each and every day.  They see their future dwindling away and they’re wondering how to save what’s left.

There’s no inspiration coming from the White House on this.  There’s no motivation, there’s no uplifting whatsoever.

And, by the way, the last time a president said,

“Go out there and spend, engage in commerce.”

It was George W. Bush, and the Democrat Party raked him over the coals for being insensitive.  There’s supposed to be shared sacrifice because of the war in Iraq, it was supposed to be shared sacrifice.  Well, hello.  You’re getting shared sacrifice.  This is what they meant all along, everybody gets poorer.  That’s shared sacrifice.