I just cut and pasted this article for safe keeping....



FACT CHECK: Obama's words on home aid ring hollow
Buzz UpSendSharePrint
By CALVIN WOODWARD and JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writers – Wed Feb 25, 5:46 am ET
Featured Topics: Barack Obama Presidential Transition

AFP – President Barack Obama waves prior to his address before a joint session of Congress in the Capitol in …
Slideshow:President Barack Obama
Play VideoBarack Obama Video:Health Care Overhaul? FOXBusiness
Play VideoBarack Obama Video:Rep. Perlmutter:Use Stimulus For Roads, New Energy CBS4 Denver
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama knows Americans are unhappy that their taxes will be used to rescue people who bought mansions beyond their means.
But his assurance Tuesday night that only the deserving will get help rang hollow.
Even officials in his administration, many supporters of the plan in Congress and the Federal Reserve chairman expect some of that money will go to people who used lousy judgment.
The president skipped over several complex economic circumstances in his speech to Congress — and may have started an international debate among trivia lovers and auto buffs over what country invented the car.
A look at some of his assertions:
OBAMA: "We have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and refinance their mortgages. It's a plan that won't help speculators or that neighbor down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford, but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values."
THE FACTS: If the administration has come up with a way to ensure money only goes to those who got in honest trouble, it hasn't said so.
Defending the program Tuesday at a Senate hearing, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said it's important to save those who made bad calls, for the greater good. He likened it to calling the fire department to put out a blaze caused by someone smoking in bed.
"I think the smart way to deal with a situation like that is to put out the fire, save him from his own consequences of his own action but then, going forward, enact penalties and set tougher rules about smoking in bed."
Similarly, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. suggested this month it's not likely aid will be denied to all homeowners who overstated their income or assets to get a mortgage they couldn't afford.
"I think it's just simply impractical to try to do a forensic analysis of each and every one of these delinquent loans," Sheila Bair told National Public Radio.
___
OBAMA: "And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."
THE FACTS: Depends what your definition of automobiles, is. According to the Library of Congress, the inventor of the first true automobile was probably Germany's Karl Benz, who created the first auto powered by an internal combustion gasoline engine, in 1885 or 1886. In the U.S., Charles Duryea tested what library researchers called the first successful gas-powered car in 1893. Nobody disputes that Henry Ford created the first assembly line that made cars affordable.
___
OBAMA: "We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before."
THE FACTS: Oil imports peaked in 2005 at just over 5 billion barrels, and have been declining slightly since. The figure in 2007 was 4.9 billion barrels, or about 58 percent of total consumption. The nation is on pace this year to import 4.7 billion barrels, and government projections are for imports to hold steady or decrease a bit over the next two decades.
___
OBAMA: "We have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade."
THE FACTS: Although 10-year projections are common in government, they don't mean much. And at times, they are a way for a president to pass on the most painful steps to his successor, by putting off big tax increases or spending cuts until someone else is in the White House.
Obama only has a real say on spending during the four years of his term. He may not be president after that and he certainly won't be 10 years from now.
___
OBAMA: "Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day."
THE FACTS: This may be so, but it isn't only Republicans who pushed for deregulation of the financial industries. The Clinton administration championed an easing of banking regulations, including legislation that ended the barrier between regular banks and Wall Street banks. That led to a deregulation that kept regular banks under tight federal regulation but extended lax regulation of Wall Street banks. Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, later an economic adviser to candidate Obama, was in the forefront in pushing for this deregulation.
___
OBAMA: "In this budget, we will end education programs that don't work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don't need them. We'll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we're not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don't use. We will root out the waste, fraud and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn't make our seniors any healthier, and we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas."
THE FACTS: First, his budget does not accomplish any of that. It only proposes those steps. That's all a president can do, because control over spending rests with Congress. Obama's proposals here are a wish list and some items, including corporate tax increases and cuts in agricultural aid, will be a tough sale in Congress.
Second, waste, fraud and abuse are routinely targeted by presidents who later find that the savings realized seldom amount to significant sums. Programs that a president might consider wasteful have staunch defenders in Congress who have fought off similar efforts in the past.
___
OBAMA: "Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years."
THE FACTS: While the president's stimulus package includes billions in aid for renewable energy and conservation, his goal is unlikely to be achieved through the recovery plan alone.
In 2007, the U.S. produced 8.4 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, including hydroelectric dams, solar panels and windmills. Under the status quo, the Energy Department says, it will take more than two decades to boost that figure to 12.5 percent.
If Obama is to achieve his much more ambitious goal, Congress would need to mandate it. That is the thrust of an energy bill that is expected to be introduced in coming weeks.
___
OBAMA: "Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs."
THE FACTS: This is a recurrent Obama formulation. But job creation projections are uncertain even in stable times, and some of the economists relied on by Obama in making his forecast acknowledge a great deal of uncertainty in their numbers.
The president's own economists, in a report prepared last month, stated, "It should be understood that all of the estimates presented in this memo are subject to significant margins of error."
Beyond that, it's unlikely the nation will ever know how many jobs are saved as a result of the stimulus. While it's clear when jobs are abolished, there's no economic gauge that tracks job preservation. The estimates are based on economic assumptions of how many jobs would be lost without the stimulus.
___
Associated Press writers Tom Raum, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Dina Cappiello contributed to this story.

enjoyed the comments of Rep. Capuano

Wall Street offers mea culpa for meltdown

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer
11 mins ago
WASHINGTON – How's this for an image makeover? Someone on Wall Street is actually apologizing for any role he or his bank may have played in underwriting a housing bubble that burst and plunged the nation into a recession.
"We are sorry for it. I am especially sorry for what's happened to shareholders" and to all Americans, Morgan Stanley chief executive John Mack told a House panel Wednesday. "Clearly, as an industry, we have accountability and we're taking responsibility. I'll take responsibility for my firm."
The seven CEOs assembled with him remained silent.
Rep. Michael Capuano didn't, rejecting the apology outright and stopping just short of calling the banking chiefs criminals.
"You come here today on your bicycles after buying Girl Scout cookies and helping out Mother Teresa," railed the Boston-area Democrat. "You're saying, 'We're sorry. We didn't mean it. We won't do it again. Trust us.' I have some people in my (district) who have robbed some of your banks and they say the same thing."
It was unclear whether Mack's mea culpa did much to answer public fury over the conduct of an industry that got the recession ball rolling and was the first to receive a taxpayer bailout with virtually no strings attached.
Lawmakers on the panel weren't assuaged, many still bitter over passing the deeply unpopular $700 billion rescue that may or may not have helped slow the economic slide — only to see reports that Wall Street firms doled out more than $18 billion in bonuses to their employees last year.
Not helping soothe tempers: The longer the economy slumps, the harder it is to raise campaign cash for the 2010 elections. Every House member will be on the ballot.
Mere contrition and gratitude satisfied almost no one on the committee Wednesday, but the CEOs tried.
First point: They understand that everyone's furious.
"It is abundantly clear that we are here amidst broad public anger at our industry," Lloyd C. Blankfein, CEO of The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said at the opening of testimony.
Second: They abandoned any attempt to defend what so many find indefensible.
Why, Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., wanted to know, does anyone need multimillion-dollar bonuses on top of million-dollar salaries?
"If in good times you were told you weren't going to be getting a bonus, what part of your job would you not do?" Frank asked. "Would you, like, leave early on Wednesdays? Would you take longer lunches?"
"It's complicated," Mack said. "All that has to be looked at again."
Third: They're making sacrifices, too.
Citigroup's Vikram Pandit reminded the committee that he canceled an order for a $50 million jet last month because it seemed unseemly just after his company received $45 billion from the government.
"We understand the old model doesn't work," Pandit said, adding that he's cut his own salary to $1 until Citicorp returns to profitability. "We did not adjust quickly enough to this new world. Let me be clear to the committee: I get the new reality."
He would have been blind and deaf to have missed it. Citigroup canceled the jet order after none other than President Barack Obama pressured them to nix the "outrageous" expenditure.
What about Citicorp's other jets and those owned by the other banks?
"You could sell them" and use the money to reimburse taxpayers, commented Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif. "The big show of not buying one particular type of new plane flies in the face of how you're really flying."
No one took him up on the suggestion.
Next, the CEOs tried to frame the debate in future terms by offering to take personal responsibility for any problems going forward.
JP Morgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon even offered to personally deal with credit card rate complaints, one by one.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., ridiculed "our captains of the universe" and demanded to know whether the banks toughened the terms of credit cards or loans last year.
Bank of America chief executive Ken Lewis tried a little recession humor. These days, Lewis said, he feels more like a "corporal of the universe," rather than a captain.
Not amused, Waters snapped, "Did you increase your credit card interest rates?"
Yes, Lewis replied, on about 9 percent of Bank of America's customers.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.