One is that he actually believes what he's saying, that it makes sense to him.  Oh, Lord.

The other is that he doesn't really understand the issues, and is merely parroting what his advisors have been steadily feeding him, much like someone who has been brainwashed.  Can I invoke the Lord again?

There isn't any explanation of that conclusion.

It is, as Steve M says above, a throwaway line that (a) doesn't answer the real question and (b) doesn't give any clue as to what the real answer may be. It's just the same canned answer we've gotten for a while, and it may be a smokescreen for good action or the smoke and mirrors of bad action.

The question of who is going to buy (or sell) the toxic assets/loans, for how much, and what they're going to do with them once they've bought them should still be clarified. Additionally, if the toxic assets/loans are overvalued when sold, which seems likely, won't there still be beaucoup phantom assets floating around, untethered to reality?

Bush used it all the time.

Sheesh.

Or to utilize some tired Internet parlance:

The country and gov't are broke.  Obama has 60% approval ratins and should use them to restructure our ecnomy.

Instead he attempting, quite poorly, to prop up this consumer based economy through more debt, borrowing and spending.

It won't work and maybe he doesn't even realize why.

Good lord indeed.

I haven't seen anything meaningful from Treasury that supports this "cost analysis".

I really don't think he gets it at all.  I think he's following his 'experts', Geithner, Summers, et al.  Those people don't want the system changed in any way. They're fighting to keep it intact.

The lower cost claim without explanation is something of an insult to everyone's intelligence.

I can only imagine your opinion if Obama had said he was against nationalization for ideological reasons or becasue he DID want to coddle management.

Instead he makes a claim that pre-emptive nationalization would cost the taxpayers more. And yet, you think THAT argument is the worst answer he could give!  Yes, this claim is unproven (and UNPROVABLE, until after the fact), but then again all claims that nationalization is the way to go are also UNPROVABLE.  

Sorry, but Obama doesn't get it. The problems we face didn't arise out of the failure of the banks. The failure of the banks arose out of the problems that we face.

For decades, save a brief respite during Clinton's term of office, wages have been stagnant or worse. The financial 'Masters of the Universe' in cooperation with government policy and the destruction of regulation, substituted EZ credit and asset bubbles (which together created the illusion of wealth and allowed people to live beyond their means by burying themselves in debt) for shared wealth in the form of rising wages that should have been the result of fairly incredible increases in productivity.

I don't care how much money you throw at the banks. Until the root cause of the problem (too much debt, too little income) is addressed, nothing will be fixed.

Obama doesn't get it. He and Geithner and the gang want to go back to economic "growth" based on ever expanding debt. I suggest that Obama surround himself with a different set of advisers because the ones he has are the exact types that Ferdinand Pecora of the Percora Commission was referring to in the preface of his book:

"That its leaders are eminently fitted to guide our nation, and that they would make a much better job of it than any other body of men, Wall Street does not for a moment doubt. Indeed, if you now hearken to the Oracles of The Street, you will hear now and then that the money-changers have been much maligned. You will be told that a whole group of high-minded men, innocent of social or economic wrongdoing, were expelled from the temple because of the excesses of a few. You will be assured that they had nothing to do with the misfortunes that overtook the country . . . that they were simply scapegoats, sacrificed on the altar of unreasoning public opinion to satisfy the wrath of a howling mob..." - Ferdinand Percora, from his 1939 memoir, Wall Street Under Oath.

Obama acknowledged in the question he posed to himself every concern about the Geithner Plan that myself and others have expressed here and elsewhere.  He gets the concerns and remains open to future course correction up to and including government adminstered receivership.

Is his answer horrible?  No, just wrong in my view.  If it is true the Geithner Plan is the less costly approach, the assumption is that the Giethner Plan will work.  If the plan fails, as I believe it will, and that failure requires receivership, then Obama's approach will be far more expensive, financially and politically,. than jumping directly to the receivership option now.  

Nevertheless, concerns I have had that Obama and our politics in general are too captive of Wall Street to act otherwise have been, to an incomplete yet not insignificant extent, addressed by the President himself.  

I did not like CLinton's 1993 budget, believing it too compromised and incapable of solving the problems of the day.  But it worked over time.  I am 100% for stuff that works and know from experience approaches other then my own .   I hope I am similarly wrong about the Geithner PLan.  I will continue to voice my concerns in the hope the Plan is modified if not abandoned, but I am far less concerned today that Obama is a political captive of Wall Street than I was yesterday.  

Right or worng, Obama acknowledged all of my concerns, repeating back nearly each and every criticism and explained why he disagrees.  No matter his explanation fell short of convincing me of the soundness of his approach, his awareness of the issues and acknowledgement of the potential for future course corrections is refreshing.  Others with whom I have disagreed have in the past succeeded despite my misgivings, and I hope that is the case this time.

I like the term he used: "preemptive nationalization".  That suggests to me that he and his administration believe that the facts don't exist today that would merit nationalization.  It's an interesting comparison, I think, to the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war that got us into Iraq.  And the least drastic alternative approach is what I have been assuming they have been doing all along.  

First do no harm?  You're supposed to be TREATING the harm already done, doc!!

It's almost like a perverse anti-affirmative action talking point: yes, we must fix the problem, but we can't do so by actually fixing it.

That said, and assuming that the stated goal is to return to a solvent, functioning financial system as quickly and cheaply as possible, I don't see anything glaringly, provably wrong in what Obama is quoted as saying or what his Administration's been doing.  So far the crisis seems to be moderating more quickly than I had imagined possible.