Mister Eloquence answers BBC question without teleprompter

04/02/2009

Nick Robinson: “A question for you both, if I may. The prime minister has repeatedly blamed the United States of America for causing this crisis. France and Germany both blame Britain and America for causing this crisis. Who is right? And isn’t the debate about that at the heart of the debate about what to do now?”

PRESIDENT OBAMA: “I, I, would say that, er… [PAUSE] …if you look at… [PAUSE] …the, the sources of this crisis… [PAUSE] … the United States certainly has some accounting to do with respect to… [PAUSE] …a regulatory system that was inadequate to the massive changes that have taken place in the global financial system… [PAUSE] I think what is also true is that… [PAUSE] …here in Great Britain… [PAUSE] …here in continental Europe… [PAUSE] …around the world. We were seeing the same mismatch between the regulatory regimes that were in place and er… [PAUSE] …the highly integrated, er, global capital markets that have emerged … [PAUSE] So at this point, I’m less interested in… [PAUSE] … identifying blame than fixing the problem. I think we’ve taken some very aggressive steps in the United States to do so, not just responding to the immediate crisis, ensuring banks are adequately capitalised, er, dealing with the enormous, er… [PAUSE] …drop-off in demand and contraction that has taken place. More importantly, for the long term, making sure that we’ve got a set of, er, er, regulations that are up to the task, er, and that includes, er, a number that will be discussed at this summit. I think there’s a lot of convergence between all the parties involved about the need, for example, to focus not on the legal form that a particular financial product takes or the institution it emerges from, but rather what’s the risk involved, what’s the function of this product and how do we regulate that adequately, much more effective coordination, er, between countries so we can, er, anticipate the risks that are involved there. Dealing with the, er, problem of derivatives markets, making sure we have set up systems, er, that can reduce some of the risks there. So, I actually think… [PAUSE] …there’s enormous consensus that has emerged in terms of what we need to do now and, er… [PAUSE] …I’m a great believer in looking forwards than looking backwards.”

We elected a Teleprompter Reader as our president.