Obama's news conference: 'To go at it'

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama is getting ready "to go at it'' tomorrow night, with his second prime-time news conference.

Today, following his daily briefing on the economy, the president spoke out in the Cabinet room to say that his Treasury Department initiative for the banking industry announced this morning should be "critical in getting credit flowing again,'' but cautioned, "It's not going to happen overnight.''

"Can you offer any assurances to taxpayers who are skeptical?'' a reporter called out.

"You know,'' said the president, brushing aside any questions at planned statements such as this - customary for presidents at Cabinet meetings and Oval Office statements -- "I'll have a full press conference tomorrow night, and you guys are going to be able to go at it.''

There is plenty to "go at,'' the president understands -- in the midst of public and congressional outrage over bonuses for bailed-out investment bankers, controversy over deficits that could be worse than the president has projected and the president's own comments in recent media interviews about Special Olympics bowling, "gallows humor'' in a struggling economy and more.

That's at 8 pm EST Tuesday. Come see it here.

This is what else Obama had to say today:

"We have been busy on a whole host of fronts over the last several weeks, with the primary purpose of stabilizing the financial system so banks are lending again, so that the secondary markets are working again, in order to make sure that families can get basic consumer loans, auto loans, student loans; that small businesses are able to finance themselves and we can start getting this economy moving again.

"As I've said before, there are a number of legs in the stool in the economic recovery. Step one is making sure that we had a stimulus package that was robust enough to fill the huge gap in demand that was created by the recession. Step two was making sure that we had a effective homeowners' plan to try to keep people in their homes and to stabilize the housing market. Because of the work that's already been done, you are starting to see glimmers of hope in the housing market that stabilization may be taking place. Mortgage rates are at a very, very low level, and you're starting to see some activity in the housing market.

"We then took a series of steps to improve liquidity in what had been secondary markets that had been completely frozen. And we are now seeing activity in student loans and auto loans. We announced last week a small-business initiative that ensures that we have more activity and you start seeing small businesses being able to get credit again in order to sell products and services and make payroll.

"And this morning, (Treasury) Secretary (Timothy) Geithner announced the latest element in this multi-pronged approach, and that is a mechanism that he, in close consultation with the Federal Reserve and the FDIC, has initiated in order to allow banks to take some of their bad assets off their books, sell them into a market, but do so in a way that doesn't just obligate taxpayers to buy at whatever price they're willing to sell these assets; instead, involves a public-private partnership that allows market participants who have every interest in making a profit to accurately price these assets so that the taxpayers share in the upside as well as the downside.

"And we believe that this is one more element that is going to be absolutely critical in getting credit flowing again. It's not going to happen overnight. There's still great fragility in the financial systems. But we think that we are moving in the right direction. And we are very confident that, in coordination with the Federal Reserve and the FDIC, other relevant institutions, that we are going to be able to not only start unlocking these credit markets, but we're also going to be in a position to design the regulatory authorities that are necessary to prevent this kind of systemic crisis from happening again.

"And I'm looking forward to traveling to the G20 so that we ensure that the activities that we're doing here in the United States are effectively matched with comparable action in other countries. And Secretary Geithner has already traveled and met with the finance ministers of the G20 states so that we can make sure that we're all moving on the same page.

"So the good news is that we have one more critical element in our recovery. But we've still got a long way to go, and we've got a lot of work to do. But I'm very confident that, with the team that we've got assembled, we're going to be able to make it happen.''