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I will be on CNBC’s Street Signs this afternoon at 2 PM EDT. Governor Howard Dean and I will be discussing health care reform with host Erin Burnett. This should be a debate among alternatives, not “Are you for health care reform or the status quo?” I propose Congress adopt the following plan instead of the legislation they are now considering.

Provoked by the Vice President’s comment on Sunday that the Administration “misread the economy,” the Obama Administration is partway through an unplanned shift in their topline economic message. It’s hard to reconcile a “stay the course” strategy with (a) new bad data, (b) “we misread the economy” and (c) “we had incomplete information.”

The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets met at 8:30 AM today to announce the specifics of the new policy actions described by the President in the Rose Garden earlier this morning.
This note is just a collection of primary source documents from today’s announcement.  Generalists will likely be interested in the first six documents, as [...]

President Bush spoke at 8:02 AM this morning in the Rose Garden.
Good morning.  I just completed a meeting with my working group on financial markets.  We discussed the unprecedented and aggressive steps the federal government is taking to address the financial crisis.  Over the past few weeks, my administration has worked with both parties in [...]

Here’s what President Bush said at 10:45 AM today in the Rose Garden.
This is really important.
Good morning.  I thank Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and SEC Chairman Chris Cox for joining me today.
This is a pivotal moment for America’s economy.  Problems that originated in the credit markets — and first showed [...]

The Senate is now debating a climate change bill, typically referred to as the “Lieberman-Warner” bill, referring to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Sen. John Warner (R-VA).  Technically, we think they’ll end up considering a slightly different version of that bill, offered by the Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. Barbara [...]

In the Rose Garden last Friday, the President proposed policy changes to address problems in the subprime mortgage market.  Here are his remarks and a fact sheet.
I’m going to do this in three parts:  (1) give a few definitions for those who are new to the housing finance world; (2) define the problem; and (3) [...]