{"id":3198,"date":"2009-03-22T23:15:35","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T03:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=3198"},"modified":"2009-03-22T23:15:35","modified_gmt":"2009-03-23T03:15:35","slug":"kroft-to-obama-are-you-punch-drunk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2009\/03\/kroft-to-obama-are-you-punch-drunk\/","title":{"rendered":"Kroft to Obama: Are you punch-drunk?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Politico.com<\/a> | Craig Gordon & Jonathan Martin | March 22, 2009<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama said he believes the global financial system remains at risk of implosion with the failure of Citigroup or AIG, which could touch off \u201can even more destructive recession and potentially depression.\u201d<\/p>\n

His remarks came in a\u201c60 Minutes\u201d interview in which he was pressed by Steve Kroft for laughing and chuckling several times while discussing the perilous state of the world\u2019s economy. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou’re sitting here. And you’re\u2014 you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, \u2018I mean, he’s sitting there just making jokes about money\u2014\u2019 How do you deal with\u2014 I mean: explain. . .\u201d Kroft asked at one point.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you punch-drunk?\u201d Kroft said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no. There’s gotta be a little gallows humor to get you through the day,\u201d Obama said, with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Obama tried to inject some optimistic notes into the interview, saying he sees \u201cflickers of hope\u201d that the economy is beginning to turn the corner.<\/p>\n

And he seemed intent on cooling the populist anger rising in the country, particularly over AIG\u2019s $165 million in bonuses. He signaled that he would like to see changes in a House resolution that would tax the bonuses at 90 percent, saying \u201cwe can\u2019t govern out of anger.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMain Street has to understand, unless we get these banks moving again, then we can\u2019t get this economy to recover. And we don\u2019t want to cut off our nose to spite our face,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The interview captured the balancing act that Obama must strike on the economy. He gave a nod to public anger at Wall Street while saying it could not dictate his response.<\/p>\n

He got in a few whacks of his own at Wall Street executives who contributed to the meltdown\u2014referring to them ironically at one point as \u201cthe best and the brightest\u201d\u2014while being ever-mindful that he still needs their help to dig out of the crisis.<\/p>\n

His talk of depression could be viewed as alarmist\u2014but it also seemed aimed at bracing Congress and the public for the unpopular prospect of spending even more taxpayer dollars to prop up Wall Street. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is set to roll out a plan Monday aimed at restoring the flow of credit that would back up private investments with government funds.<\/p>\n

. . . more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politico.com | Craig Gordon & Jonathan Martin | March 22, 2009 President Barack Obama said he believes the global financial system remains at risk of implosion with the failure of Citigroup or AIG, which could touch off \u201can even more destructive recession and potentially depression.\u201d His remarks came in a\u201c60 Minutes\u201d interview in which he … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}