Barack Obama interview

Brian Williams Anchor & “Nightly News” managing editor • Profile

BRIAN WILLIAMS: What was your message at Wall Street today?

BARACK OBAMA: I think the core of the message is that we're all in this together.  And that for a lot of years now, the way we thought about our economy that Wall Street is somehow separate from Main Street.

People here have been doing extraordinarily well.  We've seen hedge funds, private equity funds and investment bankers make extraordinary profits.  And out in the hinterlands, people are struggling to fill up the gas tank or save for their child's college education or pay for their own retirement.

Now, with the sub prime lending crisis, I think Wall Street's jittery.  But you also have 2.5 million people who may lose their homes.  And there are some structural issues that I think we have to deal with, to make sure that everybody is seeing a growing economy but also, everybody is prospering at the same time.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Is Gordon Gecko dead or alive, Michael Douglas' famous character in Wall Street who said "Greed is good"?

BARACK OBAMA: You know, my sense is that you don't have the same sorts of over the top statements that you saw during that period.  But the underlying economic factors that produced a very small number of extraordinary winners and there's been enormous waste, stagnation for ordinary workers, which is why we've got the greatest income inequality since any time since the gilded age.

Now, I think that most Americans don't resent people for getting rich.  They want to get rich themselves.  And they believe in the free market system.  But they worry that the system may be rigged.  And that given the combination of technology and globalization, that more and more people are not able to compete and potentially over the long term, that their children may be a little bit worse off than they were.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: I asked this at the last democratic debate.  Are-- are hedge funds good or bad for America?  Is it right for these hedge funds making billions and billions of dollars along with the hedge fund managers?

BARACK OBAMA: Well, I don't think that hedge funds are bad per se.  I think they're just one more financial tool.  And in that sense, they're useful.  But I think that what we've seen are a number of rules that skew in the favor of folks on Wall Street.  Private equity funds and hedge fund managers who are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries.

There are some failures in the regulatory regimes that have been set up.  For example, I talked today-- that there may be an incestuous relationship between ratings agencies that are determining the quality of investments and the people that they're rating.

So, what we need is stronger market transparency and accountability.  That's good for everybody and the marketplace.  We have to think about how are we investing to make sure that everybody can compete in this global economy?  And that means investing in education and it means investing in things like energy independence.  And we've got to rebuild our social safety net, particularly on health care and retirement security, where a lot of ordinary Americans are seeing that security slip away.  When that security slips away, they are more likely to turn to things like protectionism that, over time, may constrict economic growth overall.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Who or what do you think is to blame for this current mortgage and credit crisis?  Who do we see about that?

BARACK OBAMA: Well, I think there are a lot of folks who ought to take some responsibility.  The original idea was a good one, which was that let's see if we can distribute this more broadly and make it easier to provide loans to people who otherwise might be-- not be able to get a mortgage loan.

Over time, what ended up happening was that the appraisers started loosening their standards.  The mortgage brokers started playing around with their standards.  Then, the people who were buying these securities weren't really checking  very carefully to see whether the underlying mortgage could support the loans that were made.

And so, over time, you had everybody I think conspiring to just do what felt good and what was making a lot of money.  The problem was that a lot of homeowners were induced to take out loans that they could afford only if home prices continued to go up.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Let's talk about the campaign which I understand you've been spending some of your free time doing.  To-- what's the surprise?  What is it, seven months into it?

BARACK OBAMA: You know, I am number one surprised by the extraordinary interest of the American people.  I think even early on, I mean, we were getting crowds of twenty thousand people in Austin, Texas, twenty thousand people in Atlanta even back in March and April.

There is a hunger for change in the country.  And there's a recognition that we've got a series of decisions that we've got to make.  Not just on the war, but I think about health care, energy, education, that we can't put off any longer.

So, that I think is a pleasant surprise.  Obviously, the intensity of the campaign for so long makes you worry that at a certain point, people will just say, enough already.  And you still have uncertainty at the calendar which surprises me, because you'd think that four or five months out, we'd know which states are going when.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Yeah.

BARACK OBAMA: (OVERTALK) still don't know that.  So that has made it difficult to plan I think creates some additional layers of concern.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Well, about this front load in calendar, how-- how great a concern do you have that just at the time when a lot of Americans will be dialing in, a lot of states will have already made the decisions leading up to who the nominees of the party are.

BARACK OBAMA: Well, I think-- I-- I think it's a problem.  I think that in some ways for people like myself and Hillary Clinton who are a little bit better known, it gives us probably an unfair advantage.  On the other hand, it also means that we're gonna see a very long general election which could end up making it even uglier than usual general elections.

Because when there's that much time to be filled in general elections typically, it ends up being filled with negative ads.  That seems to be the process.  Now, that's a process that I hope to change as the nominee.  But you know, I think we would have benefited from spreading out the-- this primary season longer, so that people weren't voting right after they'd done their Christmas shopping.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: How do you think it is that so many polls show Senator Clinton as the agent of change?

BARACK OBAMA: Well, you know, the truth is that Senator Clinton I think is the default candidate for a lot of Democrats.  People who have fond memories of Bill Clinton and his administration.  And they still are less familiar with me.  They remember me from a speech in 2004.  They have favorable views of me, but I don't think they have a clear sense of what my agenda is.

That takes more time.  In Iowa and in New Hampshire and in the early states, people are starting to get a better sense of me.  But until then, you're not gonna see a lot of change.  And so, I don't anticipate a big shift in the national polls until after the early primary states, where we're able to concentrate our resources and deliver our message more effectively.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: What does it say about your effort to-- to shine a bright light on Sen-- Senator Clinton?  Things like her war vote?

BARACK OBAMA: Well, you know, we're not gonna spend too much time in this campaign focused on her.  Well, we want to focus on the future and we want to focus on my message of change and what we can do to provide universal health care for all Americans in a sensible, cost effective way.  What we can do to provide a world class education system that involves both more money and reform of the system.  What we can do to deal with global warming and-- and energy independence.

If-- if we're focusing on those issues, as well as a fundamental shift in foreign politics, then we think we're gonna give a very strong alternative to any of the other candidates in the field.

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