Press Briefing by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

2:18 P.M. EST

MR. GIBBS: My apologies for being late. Let me just take a second and get set up here. A couple quick announcements before we get started. The President spoke today with Governor Henry of Oklahoma, and both Senators Inhofe and Coburn about the deadly tornadoes that struck there, and passed along his condolences and best wishes to the victims.

Later this afternoon, as many of you know, state transportation officials from nearly every state are here at the White House and speaking with Secretary LaHood. They will be visiting the stakeout location at 3:15 p.m. to discuss infrastructure needs and projects that are ready to go, once a recovery and reinvestment plan is through Congress and signed by the President. So you guys can go out and hear all of them.

And with that, let's take a few questions. Yes, ma'am.

Q Thanks, Robert. Going back to Secretary Geithner's announcement yesterday on the bailout, can you talk about why the administration didn't realize that the market reaction was going to be so bad, and why there weren't more details attached to it?

MR. GIBBS: Well, let me -- I'm going to give a broader answer to -- sort of a broader walk-through of the plan. But one of the things I'll talk about is that yesterday's speech and framework were not designed for a one-day market reaction. I think we can all go back in the both recent and not so recent history and see that one-day announcements have provided positive changes in the market for plans that ultimately turned out to be unsuccessful, just as negative reactions have sometimes been at the forefront of plans that worked. The plan that the Secretary outlined is not designed, though, to take care of the market for one day.

Let me walk through just sort of a little bit broader answer on the plan, though. Obviously, as many of you know, we've dealt with this for quite some time. This is an enormously complicated problem. And to date, the program that has dealt with many of these bad investments and bad assets has been flawed. It's important that as we move forward, that the government is able to follow through on the commitments that it makes.

Secretary Geithner understands that, again, as I said, this is not going to be judged on the one-day market reaction, but instead by what is best for the long-term economic health of America.

Understand -- let's understand a few things of what the Secretary talked about yesterday. more