President Obama Speaks

President-elect Obama gave a weekly address yesterday highlighting the nation's economic difficulties, embedded above. It rings with his typical confidence, but also with a realization of the great challenges faced by the American economy.

As Juan Cole points out, we are still in the rough as long as President Bush is in office. There is always the possibility that he could further screw things up, creating a bank collapse as happened at the end of the Hoover Administration.

It is also worth noting that although President-elect Obama has a general idea of what needs to be done, he does not give much in the way of specifics. We will need to learn more before we can assess his economic plan in detail.