well, the housing thing is a whole separate thing. maybe we can talk to david about that a bit later. but the debt reduction debate. you indicated what you see now is a reprieve of that debt reduction debate that s going to go on now for another few months over another issue. so my question to you is are public people, elected officials in washington, d.c. so ignorant of the reality in this country that they can t figure out when they go to their home districts or home states that when they drive past shopping malls where the parking lot is half filled instead of fully filled that that is a direct result of their inability to get together in washington? people who are afraid to shop right. and i think what s really important about this is, you know, government does have limited tools to actually affect economic growth which ultimately leads to more jobs. but they do have something to do when it comes to leadership and some sense of certainty.
new york times last week that would allow for some sort of refinancing of existing mortgages, regardless of whether people are under water or in the money on their mortgages, and refinance them at 4% across the board. that would be a much bigger jolt, positive jolt, to the economy than i think some of the things we ve seen in the paper that might be proposed by the white house, roads and bridge construction and things like that. we either need something really, really big on the jobs front or we need a big refinancing of existing mortgages to get some real cash out there in the economy. what ron brings up, this housing thing, it s been made somewhat clear to me, don t go too far out on a limb on this reporting that we might do a big thing on housing. this speech is about jobs. that doesn t mean they re not going to do housing later this fall, but that s not what this speech is about. so what is it exactly that maybe corporate america would like to see in this speech? i think corp
from a government of the people to a government of the regulators, or the regulating agencies. but would you acknowledge it was not a good regulatory system for the financial securities community? i would acknowledge that it needed continual updating because of all the new instruments. but we never, in the whole, the largest regulatory thing i ve ever seen, 500 rule makings. when we did sarbanes-oxley, it was 16 rule makings. but in that whole process, we never addressed the problem. we never went after what caused the problem, which was all the housing thing that was pushed by the congress and the administration. i grant you there were a badly run systems and some things that were not regulated and should be, and we supported that. what are the one or two things you expect to be working with in the new administration? you had great things to say about bill daly, the new chief of staff for barack obama. you called him a real pro, man of stature, strong appointment. you didn t was
i love that. it s unfortunate that s the society we live in. stinks like money. it does. thanks, fellas. nice to see you. we ll bring them back. we ll solve the housing thing yet. paul southern, haven t forgotten about you. don t you worry. up next, what if our late night talk show hosts were not allowed to ridicule politicians by law? let alone our treasury secretaries? it s a real law. it s on the books. in one of the largest democracies here in the western hemisphere. we ll tell you where and what the penalties are and if there are any exceptions after the break. ook. you need website development, 1-on-1 marketing advice, search-engine marketing, and direct mail. yellowbook s got all of that. yellowbook360 s got a whole spectrum of tools. tools that are going to spark some real connections. visit yellowbook360.com and go beyond yellow.
mike viqueira at the white house for thus morning. it s going to be a busy day there. we re going to get into more of that in a minute. savannah, quickly on this housing thing, this has not gone very well. less and that 200,000 have been able to modify their mortgages. this is a big problem. to the extent it hasn t been fixed the economy really can t bounce back. so they ve got to address it, no question. it s reunion time in arizona today. he made her a national figure. today she will try to repay the favor by injecting some conservative street cred into his campaign. mccain and palin reunited on the trail this week. chief washington correspondent norah o donnell is in tucson, arizona this morning. norah, it s very interesting. they really stood by each other, weathered the storm and now palin s coming to help him out in a pretty tough campaign, right? reporter: that s right. reunited and john mccain hopes it feels so good with voters here in this state because is he facing a re