3:51 P.M. EST

Q One thing that I don't think was asked in some of the briefings this morning: If everything goes as you think it's going to go with the housing plan, how soon might the market turn around?

MR. GIBBS: The housing market or the stock market?

Q Let me start with the housing market, I'm going to come back on the stock market.

MR. GIBBS: You know, well, let me address both. I mean, obviously as we've said it on a number of occasions, none of these individual legs of the stool that the President has talked about are designed in any way for a one-day market reaction. And I think the confluence of economic news that we get every day shows the depth of the challenges that we face. I mean, opening up the newspaper today or reading statistics about housing starts or banks in Europe or Eastern Europe -- you know, I think all of it simply underscores the breadth of the challenges that we face to not only our economy, but getting the global economy back on track.

I hesitate to predict when the statistics that come out might be positive versus what we're seeing now. But I think as the President has said, and certainly underscored yesterday, the economy is probably going to get worse before it gets better. But at the same time I think yesterday was a big step forward in passing -- in signing into the law the recovery and reinvestment plan; and then today an aggressive plan to deal with not just those that are in foreclosure, but to take and help the millions of people that through no fault of their own now find themselves owing more on a house than it's worth, and the enormous challenges that that presents to a family trying to refinance or lower their payments in order to get by each month.

Q But you're not able to say whether the steps you announced today will stabilize the market within the next few months or even within the current year?

MR. GIBBS: Let me -- do I think today's steps will have a positive impact? Absolutely and wholeheartedly. I'm not going to predict when housing starts -- when those statistics might change. But do I think that the aggressive plan that the President and his team have laid out to prevent and forestall home foreclosures and the decline in housing prices -- I don't think there's any doubt of that.

Look, just the simple fact alone that, as was said in these briefings, if your house is near a home that's foreclosed the value of your house decreases, research shows, by about 9 percent. That's a big deal for people with a mortgage. So I think an aggressive plan that will finally stem the tide, the rising tide of home foreclosures, will have a big impact. I think it is, as the President has said, one aspect of the many problems that we're dealing with.

Q Let me come back to the stock market, then. There was a big sell-off yesterday after the signing of the stimulus plan. There was a big sell-off after Secretary Geithner -- so you're not talking one day, you're talking two days that were --

MR. GIBBS: How many people think that -- how many of you have stock investments? Probably most of you, right? The day TARP passed, right, the market went up a thousand points. Now, I don't know about you, but how many people that's gone well so far? Right?

So I think judging one day's events are somewhat, if not rather, meaningless. Let me finish.

I also believe that -- I mean, I think most economists would also tell you that an accumulation of news both over the weekend and on Monday impact the market on Tuesday, regardless of what individual policy moves might draw attention that day.

So I think for any number of reasons it makes very little sense to judge any particular initiative's introduction or any particular initiative's news based on what the market may do on a particular eight or ten-hour period of any given day. And I think, again, there's any number of historical examples that you can go back and find that show positive reaction for the market for ultimate economic ideas that didn't do well, and you can find negative reaction on the day in which the market may or may not have been interpreting something that did do well.

And if I could predict the stock market I'd probably have one of these jets all to myself.

Q What's the next step? You've got a banking proposal, you've got the stimulus, you've got housing. What's the next leg of the multi-legged stool?

MR. GIBBS: I think two things that will be upcoming, the first of which will be the budget over the course of the next week or so. And I think also you'll see a renewed effort, particularly as we lead into the G20 meetings in April and beyond, a real effort to redo the rules of the road in a financial reregulation and regulatory reform to ensure that many of the things that caused the problems that we're dealing with are dealt with. And I think those are the major things next.

I also -- there's implementing the recovery and reinvestment plan I think also will be very important. The President is interested in ensuring that that's done correctly and quickly. As I've said repeatedly, for better or for worse, there's not one thing alone that we have to focus on -- there are any number. So I think even as you sign a recovery plan you've still got to worry and think about a lot of things as it relates to that leg of the stool, even as you also focus on other legs.

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