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Tuesday's gaggle could best be described as the President vs. the Stock Market with the corps trying to pin responsibility for the market's recent slide on Obama's lackluster financial rescue package and Gibbs arguing that the continued downward drift has many more variables than press releases sent out by the Treasury Department:
Q February 10th, Secretary Geithner came out with his plan to deal with the banks, and there was obviously some negative reaction to that. And at the time we were told, well, this was a broad outline; details are going to be filled in. It's three weeks later, and a lot of analysts on Wall Street continue to say, we don't know where the bottom is because we don't know how many toxic assets are out there. So when are you coming out with more details? MR. GIBBS: Well, but let's complicate the question a little bit. Let's -- because I think you may have seemingly vastly oversimplified that the market on 20-some days ago acted on one piece of information and has followed Jake's trend for the better part of those three weeks in order to get us to where we are yesterday. Q There was a lot of negative reaction to the plan. We could agree on that. MR. GIBBS: We could, and we could also agree on that -- in watching your network I've seen any number of reports about the earnings of different companies. I've seen bank problems in Europe. I've seen bank problems in Eastern Europe. We've seen regulatory failings both here and overseas. I think the larger message of what the President was trying to convey today is that it's also overly simplistic to look at any one piece of information or one group of information that's driving the market in any particular direction. I think the broad scope of data and information that we're getting denotes the fact that the economy is suffering severe problems. I think that's probably what has driven, in the short term, the market to where it is. And I don't think that's necessarily surprising given the data that we see. I don't -- I think the market is looking at what Mr. Buffett said over the weekend. I think the market is probably looking at the notion that the growth rate in the 4th quarter was vastly different than what we presupposed because we ended December -- we now understand that goods were sitting in warehouses, but not leaving stores. So I think a lot of things are priced into the market.To other aguments of note: Gibbs likened a focus on the daily fluctuations of the market to a focus on the daily fluctuations of the campaign tracking polls. The Obama team, famously, was less obsessed with those numbers, and their longer view was eventually considered wise. "But if your tracking poll is over a matter of a month or two, or going down significantly, that wouldn't be a day-to-day analysis," shot back Jake Tapper. "That would be a trend and you'd be concerned about it if you were running for office."The other argument was that the stock market is not the economy and the interests of investors are not synonymous with the interests of Americans. "The President has to look out for the broader economy and for the broader population, some of -- many of whom are investors, but not exclusively investors," said Gibbs.Full briefing after the jump. Health care types should take note of the exchange near the end in which Gibbs pointedly refuses to say that the administration would oppose ending the employer tax deduction.
