The first 100 days of the Obama economy

Savannah Guthrie White House Correspondent • Profile

WASHINGTON - The first thing the White House wants you to know about assessments of a president's first hundred days is that those assessments don't matter.

“It’s the journalistic equivalent of a Hallmark holiday," a senior administration official said. "They don't mean anything but you have to observe them."

Yet advisers are only too happy to tick off a flurry of accomplishments on the economy in the administration’s first hundred days — a mix of old-fashioned palliative measures, such as increased jobless and health insurance benefits for struggling Americans, to a series of sophisticated correctives for the faltering financial system.

Among the most significant steps in the first hundred days:

• passage of a $787 billion recovery plan;
• the release of the second tranche of TARP funding — an additional $350 billion — for troubled banks;
• a public-private partnership to rid banks of toxic assets on their balance sheets;
• so-called “stress tests” on major financial institutions;
• a $275 billion housing program estimated to rescue as many as 9 million homeowners from foreclosure;
• a proposal for major overhaul of the financial regulatory system.

The president also has called for limits on executive pay; ordered the firing of General Motors chief Rick Wagoner as part of the restructuring of the auto industry; and taken credit card executives to task for raising interest rates and fees in the midst of a recession.

Aides say the president’s first hundred days have been as productive as any since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

High Stakes
The financial crisis is the defining challenge of Barack Obama’s presidency and he knows it.

Video   Geithner: Too early to say we've emerged April 24: Speaking at the G7 conference, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says while there are encouraging signs of a turnaround, it is too early to say we have emerged from pressures on the global economy. MSNBC

In an early signal of the issue’s importance, the president instituted the “economic daily briefing” — a meeting with top economic advisers in the Oval Office modeled after the daily national security briefings he receives.

Famous for his even temperament, the president's mood has darkened, aides say, in only a few instances since taking office: in his dealings with military families who've lost loved ones, and when reading some of the personal letters from Americans telling stories of their own economic turmoil.

Nor has the president shied away from articulating his own political stakes.

"I'm not going to make any excuses," he told a town hall audience in Fort Myers, Florida on Feb. 10. "If stuff hasn't worked and people don't feel like I've led the country in the right direction, then you'll have a new president."

Hitting the Right Note
Early on, the president struggled to find the proper tone in discussing the economy. Faced with a financial system in freefall, and the task of convincing Congress his massive recovery plan was necessary, in the first weeks the president spoke in grim terms, at one point going so far as to suggest the financial crisis could be irreversible if his stimulus plan weren’t enacted.

That led to concerns Obama’s foreboding tone was exacerbating the confidence crisis on Wall Street and among consumers — a criticism crystallized by former President Bill Clinton in a February television interview.

"I like the fact that he didn't come in and give us a bunch of happy talk. I'm glad he shot straight with us," Clinton said. "I just would like him to end by saying that he is hopeful and completely convinced we're gonna come through this."

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