The Most Serious Financial Crisis in Generations

On September 17, 2008, Senator Obama spoke to a crowd gathered in Elko, Nevada. The following remarks are from that address, in part:

"The events of this week have shown that the stakes in this election couldn't be clearer.

We are in the midst of the most serious financial crisis in generations. Three of America's five largest investment banks have failed or been sold off in distress. Our housing market is in shambles, and Monday brought the worst losses on Wall Street since the day after September 11th. Monday brought the worst losses on Wall Street since the day after September 11th, and today we learned that the Fed had to take unprecedented action to prevent the failure of one of the largest insurance companies in the world from causing an even larger crisis. ...

Everywhere you look, the economic news is troubling. But for so many Americans, it isn't really news at all.

600,000 workers have lost their jobs since January. Home values are falling. Your paycheck doesn't go as far as it used to. It's never been harder to save or retire; to buy gas or groceries; and if you put it on a credit card, they've probably raised your rates. In so many cities and towns across America, it feels as if the dream that so many generations have fought for is slowly slipping away.

I have every confidence that we can steer ourselves out of this crisis. That's who we are. That's what we've always done as Americans.

But the one thing I do know is this - we can't steer ourselves out of this crisis by heading in the same, disastrous direction. And that's what this election is about. ...

Times are hard. I will not pretend that the change we need will come without cost - though I have presented ways we can achieve these changes in a fiscally responsible way. I know that we'll have to overcome our doubts and divisions and the determined opposition of powerful special interests before we can truly reform a broken economy and advance opportunity.

But I am running for President because we simply cannot afford four more years of an economic philosophy that works for Wall Street instead of Main Street, and ends up devastating both."