government intervention, you know, can help the economy which is something that republicans have been arguing all along is not necessary that you need to have the free market and let the free market take its course and not have government intervention. megyn: he s, he has to do this, marc, because he s said openly that he supported t.a.r.p., the bailout of wall street, however you want to phrase it. he s on record as saying that, now he s making a different case which is i supported it, and it was an accomplishment on president bush s watch, not on president obama s watch, and don t believe president obama when he says it s the policies he barack obama backed that got us out of this mess. it was t.a.r.p., it was george bush and hank paulson. yeah. look, i mean, he said he would do things differently, he would have rejected the auto bailout that the bush administration did, he probably would have structured t.a.r.p. differently, but this is reality. we re conflating two different
recession was over in if january 20th, 2009, when he took office. what he was responsible for megyn: can president obama make that case, you know, the opposite case, you know, i should say, than what marc just made, that the economy was still in a free florida a&m and somehow it was what he did from the stimulus to cash for clunkers and on that helped it? well, i think both men get respondent for it, and obama s not giving george bush responsibility, but i don t think that s, frankly, that surprising. [laughter] but, definitely, george bush should get responsibility, have some responsibility for that. however megyn: for t.a.r.p., for the bailout of the banks. are yes, absolutely. what you need to remember is who opposed that. and when romney says some people don t like t.a.r.p., well, those some people are in the republican base. so it ll be interesting to see how this plays out because it s not something that was particularly popular with conservatives. they didn t like it, an
around. so i think that obama can take responsibility for that, and he is, and he rightfully should. megyn: marc, this seems to be how it s going to go if romney becomes the nominee. he s going to say the president gets no credit for t.a.r.p. because he didn t do it, and with respect to the stimulus, he gets no credit because it didn t get us out of this jam. kirsten cites facts president obama will surely use, the investors business daily argue says the recession ended in 2009, and just 15% of the stimulus money had gone out of the door at that point. the gdp had stopped freefalling long before the stimulus even kicked in the. yeah. as obama said, the shovel-ready projects weren t so shovel ready. there s a stanford study that says most consumers put the money towards savings, and the states used it to put off to borrow less. it didn t put money out the door to get consumers and businesses spending again, it just didn t work.
jenna: happening now , it s being described as a big bull s eye on some of america s biggest banks, the fed putting some of america s largest financial institutions on notice that they may have to pay for their handling of the subprime mortgage mess. this is nearly four years after a tidal wave of defaults led to a meltdown of the stock market, a bailout of wall street. if you re not appropriately depressed by now, take a look at all those factors! liz belt mcdonald is with us. that s quite a list, we talk about the effect of the mortgage market on the economy overall but we also, didn t we just get the news on the big settlement with five big banks when it comes to mortgage fraud? so what exactly is this now? that s right, jenna, that was over a robo signing and foreclosure problems,
and compliment of these two candidates. big fight for votes in michigan and the primary for tuesday. rick santorum hasec intoen and left this venue and lit a fire under this crowd, a mostly conservative crowd. this is a crowd that mitt romney has had a hard time attracting, the sharpest language we ve seen from rick santorum about mitt romney saying why would this party put up a candidate that the party is not excited about amp camping for. one day he ll tell you one thing and the very next day something else and the crowd seemed to response to that. mitt romney will come here and he has to wiggle through the fact that he did not support the auto bailouts while supporting, as rick santorum pointed out, the bailout of wall street. that s a message that is not sitting well with this largely conservative crowd and both of these gentlemen are trying to get that vote. as you mentioned, alex, the latest msnbc poll with governor romney showing a slight lead for all practical purposes. this is