Obama Financial Plan Scrutinized

March 9. 2009

President Barack Obama's financial plan is being heavily scrutinized in the press. Economists are watching the plans closely to calculate the state of the economy and where this is going.  

There is a great lack of confidence, due to the numbers being released. With the ever plummeting stock market, many are reconsidering where to put their money.

When Economy Bottoms out, How Will We Know?

Economists watching a range of indicators in hopes of spotting the bottom of the economy

When will this wretched economy bottom out? The recession is already in its 15th month, making it longer than all but two downturns since World War II. For now, everything seems to be getting worse: The Dow is in free fall, jobs are vanishing every day, and one in eight American homeowners is in foreclosure or behind on payments.

But the economy always recovers. It runs in cycles, and economists are watching an array of statistics, some of them buried deep beneath the headlines, to spot the turning point. The Associated Press examined three markets — housing, jobs and stocks — and asked experts where things stand and how to know when they've hit bottom.

None of them expects it to come anytime soon...

http://abcnews.go.com

Obama taking big political risk with budget

Amid a cratering stock market, huge job losses and continuing ad hoc bank interventions, President Obama is risking his presidency on the most ambitious remake of the federal government since Ronald Reagan, raising jitters among moderate Democrats and presenting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with the most daunting challenge of her career.

For liberals who fretted just a month ago that Obama was acting suspiciously centrist, his $3.6 trillion budget is a call to arms. It is also a carefully woven matrix that tackles everything from global warming to health care with new spending and taxes.

http://www.sfgate.com