Obama on CNBC - LIVE - Investing in America

[jtuck004]

Thought for a second he was gonna announce the $2.5 trillion WPA 2010, but I guess not ;)

[AlinPA]

1. I watched some of it; the introduction by CNBC was a hatchet job. Then the moderator

John Harwood, WSJ started on the president with all the faith and heritage crap (birther stuff). They put him on the defense immediately. Things like do you hate business and think them evil because they make a profit?

[jtuck004]

2. Then O got on and did a pretty good job. Took some criticism but

turned much of it off, left some people feeling better. Did a bit of listing of things they had accomplished that
will help some people in the future. But I wouldn't be surprised if at least a third of the people in that audience had not been directly touched by unemployment, theirs or a family member, and I am not sure they could say they felt any relief.

CNBC is pushing the anti-business crowing, but this is midday CNBC - that's to be expected. And I very much liked Obama's answer to the fund manager who was being a little critical, thought Main Street and Obama was being mean to the people on Wall Street. (Poor, poor investment bankers and hedge fund managers) and wanted the costs lowered that they pay in overhead on employees. Obama kinda told him, then showed him, why he was not. I think it was in there that Obama essentially told them that someone making a billion or million dollars a year should be willing to pay the same taxes as his secretary - most people semed to like that one. It was great, and even the questioner looked like he was nodding from his seat.

At one point he started arguing for the need to decrease social security coverage, but then launched into making choices like lowering social security or medicare coverage vs raising taxes. Because there is a deficit, has to be paid, yada, yada. So if taxes go up he doesn't think that cutting either would be necessary, or is he opening the door to discussion of how? (Which I would be all for. Let's open Social Security up to age 50 and above). He pointed out that the Republican strategy is to lower taxes and ignore the debt. And he says the math "aint gonna work". He is so right obout that.

But jobs for 30 million unemployed and underemployed were not directly addressed nor were programs that might address this. Like the housing market he mentioned, maybe they just want to let them drop in value a bit? On the bright side, perhaps some of the other stuff will trickle-down ;)