Text: President-Elect Obama Weekly Radio Address | Economic Stimulus to Create 3 to 4 Million Jobs | January 10, 2009

(Source: Office of the President-Elect)

We start this new year in the midst of an economic crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime.  We learned yesterday that in the past month alone, we lost more than half a million jobs – a total of nearly 2.6 million in the year 2008.  Another 3.4 million Americans who want and need full-time work have had to settle for part-time jobs.  And families across America are feeling the pinch as they watch debts mount, bills pile up and savings disappear.

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Full Text and Video: President-Elect Obama Weekly Radio Address, November 21 | Stimulus Would Create 2.5 Million Jobs by January 2011

President-elect Barack Obama’s weekly radio address promises what sounds like meaningful economic stimulus – should Congress cooperate once he takes office.  In the text and video below you’ll see his sights are set high – creating 2.5 million jobs in two years.  I hope he and his advisers are thinking about beginning to rebuild this country’s infrastructure.  It’s amazing to look around today and think about the public works projects that surround us which came from the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.  Fifty to 70 years later it’s time for re-engineering and rebuilding.  It’s also time for investment in the “green” economy so many politicians are promising and we need to ensure prosperity and security in the future.

Video below and full text of Obama’s remarks after that.

(Source for Video and Text: Official Presidential Transition Site, change.gov)

Good morning.

The news this week has only reinforced the fact that we are facing an economic crisis of historic proportions. Financial markets faced more turmoil. New home purchases in October were the lowest in half a century. 540,000 more jobless claims were filed last week, the highest in eighteen years. And we now risk falling into a deflationary spiral that could increase our massive debt even further. Read more

Dow 7000?

Back on October 6, I predicted – well sort of predicted by writing a headline on some market news aggregation – Dow 8,000.  Based on the economic and financial industry news of that day just 2 1/2 months ago (seems longer) the Dow dropping to 8,000 and staying in that vicinity for some period of time seemed reasonable.

At the time we had been through Fannie and Freddie, Lehman was failing, more banks were failing and the federal government and media began explaining things like credit default swaps to America.  Things looked bad, but some were still touting the “fundamentals” of the U.S. economy and the publicly traded companies on our major stock exchanges shouldn’t pay too high a price (with dropping share values) for the excesses of the financial services industry.  Also at that time, I was reading Kevin Phillps’ book, Bad Money.  If you want a better understanding than the average bear – or bull – of the current U.S. financial system Bad Money is a must read.  At any rate, under the influence of that book, it was just obvious that as stocks dropped sharply that day there were probably many more shoes to drop, hence the market wasn’t at the bottom yet.

Now I’ll revise my estimate.  On top of the crisis in the financial system and all that it entails, from failing banks to a still too tight credit market there are many more economic indicators pointing to the final quarter of 2008 just being the beginning of a difficult economic downturn.  Here are a few things that immediately come to mind: Read more

Full Text: Barack Obama Economy Speech | Toledo, Ohio | October 13

A Rescue Plan for the Middle-Class

As Prepared for Delivery

We meet at a moment of great uncertainty for America. The economic crisis we face is the worst since the Great Depression. Markets across the globe have become increasingly unstable, and millions of Americans will open up their 401(k) statements this week and see that so much of their hard-earned savings have disappeared. Read more