Last Thursday, President-elect Barack Obama at an event hosted by George Mason University, gave a speech addressing the present state of the U.S. economy and the need for “urgent action on an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan (ARRP) that will save or create over 3 million jobs while investing in priorities like health care, energy, and education” designed to jumpstart economic growth.
Mr. Obama stated that the present financial crisis was a crisis “largely of our own making.” He specifically attributed the current state of the economy to a combination of “imprudent and dangerous decisions” made by Wall Street executives that went unchecked as a result of “too little regulatory scrutiny, and too little accountability,” financial institutions entering into lending practices “without concern for whether borrowers could repay them” and politicians spending “taxpayer money without wisdom or discipline.” The ARRP as proposed may affect the overall political and economic context in which the federal government will respond to the financial crisis, as ARRP itself does not contain specific financial crisis provisions.
