Our Commander in Chief. Our Economist in Chief. Chaucy, the Gardner
After ~7 years in a job you'd hope an individual would be able to discuss, intelligently, matters relevant to the position.
Like banking
As you -- talked about banks. Now, if you're a commercial bank in America and your deposit -- and you have a deposit in a commercial bank in America, your deposit is insured by the federal government up to $100,000. And so, therefore, when you hear nervousness about your bank, you know, people start talking about how nervous they are about your bank's condition -- the depositor must understand that the federal government through the FDIC stands behind the deposit up to $100,000. And therefore, which leads me to say that if you're a depositor, you're in -- you're protected by the federal government.
Consumer confidence and retail sales.
THE PRESIDENT: Matt, all I can tell you is we grew in the first quarter. I can remember holding a press conference here and that same question came about, assuming that we weren't going to grow. But we showed growth. It's not the growth we'd like; we'd like stronger growth. And there are some things we can do. One is wait for the stimulus package to fully kick in and not raise taxes. If the Democratic leaders had their way in Congress, they would raise taxes, which would be the absolute wrong thing to do.
Fuel Prices
Q Mr. President, in February you were asked about Americans facing the prospect of $4 a gallon gasoline and you said you hadn't heard of that at the time. Gas prices --
THE PRESIDENT: Aware of it now.
(...)
think it was in the Rose Garden where I issued this brilliant statement: If I had a magic wand -- but the President doesn't have a magic wand. You just can't say, low gas. It took us a while to get here and we need to have a good strategy to get out of it.
The Looking Glass
THE PRESIDENT: Every day is a good morning when you get to serve the country.
The War
Secondly, there is a tough enemy, and they're brutal, and they kill at the drop of a hat in order to affect behavior. It's a little bit reminiscent of what was taking place in Iraq a couple of years ago, where the enemy knows that they can affect the mentality of the American people if they just continue to kill innocent folks. And they have no disregard [sic] for human life. And it's really important we succeed there, as well as in Iraq. We do not want the enemy to have safe haven. Of course -- unless, of course, your attitude is, this isn't a war. So if that's the case, it wouldn't matter whether we succeed or not.
But it is a two-front war. And I say there's other fronts, but there's other fronts where we're taking covert actions, for example.
The Economy
THE PRESIDENT: I'm not an economist, but I do believe that we're growing. And I can remember this press conference here where people yelling "recession this, recession that" -- as if you're economists. And I'm an optimist. I believe there's a lot of positive things for our economy. But I will tell you it's not growing the way it should and I'm sorry people are paying as high gasoline prices as they are. And all I know is good policy will help expedite a -- will strengthen our economy.
The Reason We're in this Mess
Posted by kerry at July 16, 2008 02:29 AMTHE PRESIDENT: What was the question, Olivier? I'm 62, I'm having trouble remembering a lot of things.