Economic Three-Vision

President Obama: “What you're now seeing is a profit and earnings ratios get to the point that buying stocks is a good thing if you have a long-term perspective on it. The stock market is story of like a tracking poll in politics. It bobs up and down day-to-day. And if you spend all your time worrying about that, then you're probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong. There are a lot of losses that are working their way through the system and it's not surprising the market is hurting as a consequence. We dug a very deep hole for ourselves. There were a lot of bad decisions that were made. We are cleaning up that mess. It's going to be sort of full of fits and starts, in terms of getting the mess cleaned up, but it's going to get cleaned up. And we are going to recover, and we are going to emerge more prosperous, more unified, and I think more protected from systemic risk.”

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke: “We are better off moving aggressively today to solve our economic problems. The alternative could be a prolonged episode of economic stagnation that would not only contribute to further deterioration in the fiscal situation, but would also imply lower output, employment, and incomes for an extended period.”