60 Minutes Medicare Fraud A $60 Billion Crime (Video, Text Transcript)

Scammer Explains How Easy It Is To Steal Millions

60 Minutes Medicare Fraud A $60 Billion Crime is sure to make taxpayers irate.

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Medicare Fraud: A $60 Billion Crime
A.G. Holder Tells 60 Minutes More Oversight Is Needed; Scammer Explains How Easy It Is To Steal Millions

Of all the problems facing the United States right now, none are more important than health care.

President Obama says rising costs are driving huge federal budget deficits that imperil our future, and that there is enough waste and fraud in the system to pay for health care reform if it was eliminated.

At the center of both issues is Medicare, the government insurance program that provides health care to 46 million elderly and disabled Americans. But it also provides a rich and steady income stream for criminals who are constantly finding new ways to steal a sizable chunk of the half trillion dollars that are paid out each year in Medicare benefits.

In fact, Medicare fraud - estimated now to total about $60 billion a year - has become one of, if not the most profitable, crimes in America.

This story may raise your blood pressure, along with some troubling questions about our government's ability to manage a medical bureaucracy.

If you want to find Medicare fraud, the first place you should look is South Florida, where 60 Minutes and correspondent Steve Kroft were told it has pushed aside cocaine as the major criminal enterprise.

It's a quiet crime - there are no sirens or gunfire. The only victims are the American taxpayers, and they don't even know they are being ripped off.

FBI Special Agent Brian Waterman, who 60 Minutes rode with for several days, told us the only visible evidence of the crimes are the thousands of tiny clinics and pharmacies that dot the low-rent strip malls.

You don't even know they're there because there's never anyone inside. No doctors, no nurses and no patients.

"This office number should be manned and answered 24 hours a day," Waterman explained, standing outside one of those small, unstaffed businesses.

The tiny medical supply company billed Medicare almost $2 million in July and a half million dollars while 60 Minutes was there in August, but we never found anybody inside, and our phone calls were never returned.

Sometimes, they don't even have offices: we went looking for a pharmacy at 7511 NW. 73rd Street that billed Medicare $300,000 in charges. It turned out to be in the middle of a public warehouse storage area.

"They've already told us that there's no offices here," Waterman told Kroft. "There are no businesses here. In fact they are not even allowed to have a business here."

Waterman is the senior agent in the Miami office in charge of Medicare fraud. And Kirk Ogrosky, a top Justice Department prosecutor, oversees half a dozen Medicare fraud strike forces that have been set up across the country.

The office Kroft visited operates out of a warehouse at a secret location in South Florida and includes investigators from the FBI, Health and Human Services, and the IRS.

"There's a healthcare fraud industry where people do nothing but recruit patients, get patient lists, find doctors, look on the Internet, find different scams. There are entire groups and entire organizations of people that are dedicated to nothing but committing fraud, finding a better way to steal from Medicare," Waterman explained.

"Is the Medicare fraud business bigger than the drug business in Miami now?" Kroft asked.

"I think it's way bigger," Ogrosky said.

Asked what changed, Ogrosky told Kroft, "The criminals changed."

"Sophistication," Waterman added.

"They've figured out that rather than stealing $100,000 or $200,000, they can steal $100 million. We have seen cases in the last six, eight months that involve a couple of guys that if they weren't stealing from Medicare might be stealing your car," Ogrosky explained.

"You know, we were the king of the drugs in the '80s. We're king of healthcare fraud in the '90s and the 2000's," Waterman added, speaking about South Florida.

But it's not just Miami: in March, the FBI arrested 53 people in Detroit, including a number of doctors, and charged them with billing Medicare more than $50 million for unnecessary medical procedures.

And in Los Angeles, the City of Angels Medical Center recruited homeless people off the street to fill their empty beds, offering them cash and drugs plus clean sheets and three square meals a day, while billing Medicare tens of millions of dollars for their stay.

"We have to understand this is a major fraud area," United States Attorney General Eric Holder told Kroft.

Holder is taking a crime that has been in the backwaters of law enforcement and made it a top priority at the Justice Department.

"Why do you think it's been so attractive for the criminals?" Kroft asked.

"Because I think it's been pretty easy. I think that they have found a way in which they have been able to get pretty substantial amounts of money with not a huge amount of effort and at least until now, without the possibility of great detection," Holder explained.

The attorney general agreed that the risks are much lower. "You'll see some of these people and they'll say 'You know there is not a chance that you are going to have some other drug dealer shooting at you.' The chances of being incarcerated were lower, the amount of time you would spend in jail was smaller. All of which is different now."

"You're wakin' up every day makin' $20,000, $30,000, $40,000. Every day, almost literally. And you're like 'Wow I just won the lottery,'" a man we'll call "Tony" told Kroft.

Tony is not his real name. Before he was ratted out by a friend and brought down by the FBI, he was making Wall Street money running a string of phony medical supply companies out of a building that were theoretically providing wheel chairs and other expensive equipment to Medicare patients.

He told Kroft he stole about $20 million from Medicare. He told Kroft it was "real easy."

"And you're not exactly a criminal mastermind?" Kroft asked.

"No. No," Tony said. "No, not really. It's more like common sense."

Asked if he actually ever sold any medical equipment, Tony said, "No. Just have somebody in an office answering the phone, like we're open for business. And wake up in the morning, see how much, check your bank account and see how much money you made today."

He told Kroft he didn't have any medical equipment or real clients - all of it was fake.

"And you would just fill out some invoices and some forms and send 'em to Medicare?" Kroft asked.

"That's it. In 15 to 30 days you'll have a direct deposit in your bank account. I mean it was ridiculous. It's more like taking candy from a baby," Tony said.

According to the FBI, all you have to do to get into this business is rent a cheap storefront office, find or create a front man to get an occupational license, bribe a doctor or forge a prescription pad, and obtain the names and ID numbers of legitimate Medicare patients you can bill the phony charges to.

"There's a whole industry of people out there that do nothing but provide patients," Waterman told Kroft.

Asked what he means by "provide patients," Waterman said, "I'm just talking about lists of patients, people's names, Social Security numbers, addresses, and date of birth. With those four things, you can bill for a patient."

Asked where Tony got his fictitious customers, he told Kroft, "They'll be people that would sell you a list of maybe $10 per patient. And I'll buy 1,000, 10,000 maybe at a time. And then you just fill in the patient's name and you send it. And then I used the same patients with the same company and then the next company I used the same patients and I kept using them, and they'll pay for the same patient every time."

Once the crooked companies get hold of the patient lists, usually stolen from doctors' offices or hospitals, they begin running up all sorts of outlandish charges and submit them to Medicare for payment, knowing full well that the agency is required by law to pay the claims within 15 to 30 days, and that it has only enough auditors to check a tiny fraction of the charges to see if they are legitimate.

If they're not, it's usually people like 76-year-old Clara Mahoney who catch them.

She began to notice all sorts of crazy things turning up on her quarterly Medicare statements back in 2003 - things that Medicare paid for on her behalf that she had never ordered, never wanted and never received.

"Air mattresses, a wheel chair, urine bag for my leg," Mahoney said, listing some of the unwanted items Medicare was charged for on her behalf. "It was getting so I didn't wanna open up the explanation of benefits because you know, it's like, 'Oh, no. Not again.'"

Mahoney, who says she hasn't been sick in 30 years, began calling Medicare to tell them that someone was ripping them off. But the only responses she received were letters saying that someone was looking into it. The bogus charges are still turning up on her statements.

"And I continued to report and I kept saying, 'Can't you flag my account? You know, I'm not getting any equipment or supplies. Nothing,'" she told Kroft.

They have been "looking" into Mahoney's issue for six years.

Once criminals like Tony get their hands on usable patient numbers, they try and charge Medicare for the most expensive equipment possible, which requires having access to a list of Medicare codes.

Asked what some of the best codes were, Tony told Kroft, "Artificial limbs, electric arms, electric wheelchairs. I mean, a regular patient, you can put them on two artificial legs and an artificial arm and they'll pay for it."

And that's what happened to former Federal Judge Ed Davis. He was one of those patients who started getting charges on his Medicare statement for artificial limbs.

"And I looked at it and it had charges for prosthesis. And I knew I had my arms," Judge Davis explained.

Though he has two healthy arms, his statement showed Medicare had been billed for a left and a right arm.

"Didn't anybody in Medicare check to see if any of these charges were valid?" Kroft asked Tony.

"Sometimes they'll do it. But by the time they did it, it was too late," Tony said. "We've already made $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 on it. And then we will never send 'em nothing back. And then at 30 days they'll send an inspector to your office. And by that time…it's all closed down."

They would pay first and send an auditor later.

"There's somethin' I don't understand. I mean, you're saying essentially people just fill out the phony paperwork, they send a bill to Medicare and they pay it," Kroft remarked to Brian Waterman.

"That's why you have companies that can run for 60, 90 days, and bill for ridiculous things. Because there are very few checks and balances to even determine whether these things a, were medically necessary, b, were ever given, or c, even physically possible for a patient with the kind of conditions they have," Waterman explained.

The FBI calls it "pay and chase." And riding around with them we saw plenty of examples. One tiny pharmacy in a Hialeah strip mall went from billing Medicare $13,000 in May to billing nearly a million dollars a month later.

The small, now shut-down office billed $800,000 in the month if June.

By the time we were there in August, the FBI says the owners had already burned the company, shut it down and moved on to another operation.

"We were here last week. There was stuff on the shelves. The business still had a name on it. You can still see from where the tape is that someone just took this off," Waterman told Kroft, standing outside the empty storefront.

To understand just how preposterous all of this is, the FBI says the tiny little store collected six times more money from Medicare in June than the largest Walgreen Pharmacy in the state of Florida.

It's quite an achievement, since neither the FBI nor the proprietor of the bingo parlor next door ever saw a customer coming or going.

"I've never seen people, only twice," the Bingo hall proprietor told Kroft. "No customers. It's always been locked."

We obviously had a few questions to ask the people at Medicare and requested an interview with the person in charge of preventing fraud. That turned out to be Kim Brandt, Medicare's director of program integrity.

"We went around with an FBI agent and a woman from Health and Human Services. They took us to storefront, billing three or four hundred thousand dollars a month. And they were completely empty. Nobody there. I mean, how do they get away with that?" Kroft asked.

"We're as frustrated by that as the law enforcement officials that you went out with. And in fact, our primary focus over the past years has been to tighten our enrollment standards to make it so it's much harder for people like that to be able to get in the program, and to be able to commit that kind of fraud," Brandt said.

"Look, I'm sure that you're aware of these problems. But it doesn't seem like you're doing a very good job. I don't mean you personally, but I mean, the government. This is still like a huge problem, and getting worse, right?" Kroft asked.

"Well, it really does come down to the size and scope of the Medicare program, and the resources that are dedicated to oversight and anti fraud work. One of our biggest challenges has been that we have a program that pays out over a billion claims a year, over $430 billion, and our oversight budget has been extremely limited," Brandt said.

About that there is little dispute: Medicare has just three field inspectors in all of South Florida to check up on thousands of questionable medical equipment companies.

"Clearly more auditing needs to be done and it needs to be done in real time," Attorney General Eric Holder said.

Asked why it has taken Medicare so long to figure out they were being scammed, Holder told Kroft, "I think lack of resources probably. And then I think people I don't think necessarily thought that something as well intentioned as Medicare and Medicaid would necessarily attract fraudsters. But I think we have to understand that it certainly has."

The Obama administration is providing Medicare with an additional $200 million to fight fraud as part of its stimulus package, and billions of dollars to computerize medical records and upgrade networks, which should help Medicare catch more phony charges.

But Tony, who has just begun serving his 12 year prison sentence, says there's no shortage of people in Miami waiting to take his place.

Asked how many people in Miami were doing this, Tony said, "I'd say at least 2,000 people. At least 2,000, 3,000 companies."

He estimated that less than five percent of these companies were legitimate.

"If went to the phone book and looked under medical equipment suppliers, 95 percent of the companies would be phony?" Kroft asked.

"Yes, sir," Tony replied.

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60 Minutes Obama On AIG Anger, Recession, Challenges (Full Text Version)

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"Were you surprised by the intensity of the reaction, and the hostility from the AIG bonus debacle?" 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft asked.

"I wasn't surprised by it. Our team wasn't surprised by it. The one thing that I've tried to emphasize, though, throughout this week, and will continue to try to emphasize during the course of the next several months as we dig ourselves out of this economic hole that we're in, we can't govern outta anger. We've got to try to make good decisions based on the facts in order to put people back to work, to get credit flowing again. And I'm not gonna be distracted by what's happening day to day. I've gotta stay focused on making sure that we're getting this economy moving again," President Obama replied.


The president ordered Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to use every legal means to recover the bonus money from AIG. If it is not repaid, it will be deducted from the company's next bailout payment. The House decided to extract its own revenge by passing a bill that would impose a tax of up to 90 percent on the AIG bonuses and on the bonuses of anyone making more than $250,000 a year who works for a financial institution receiving more than $5 billion in bailout funds.

"I mean you're a constitutional law professor," Kroft remarked. "You think this bill's constitutional?"

"Well, I think that as a general proposition, you don't wanna be passing laws that are just targeting a handful of individuals. You wanna pass laws that have some broad applicability. And as a general proposition, I think you certainly don't wanna use the tax code to punish people," the president replied. "I think that you've got an pretty egregious situation here that people are understandably upset about. And so let's see if there are ways of doing this that are both legal, that are constitutional, that upholds our basic principles of fairness, but don't hamper us from getting the banking system back on track."

"You've got a piece of legislation that could affect tens of thousands of people. Some of these people probably had nothing to do with the financial crisis. And some of them probably deserve the bonuses that they got," Kroft said. "I mean is that fair?"

"Well, that's why we're gonna have to take a look at this legislation carefully. Clearly, the AIG folks gettin' those bonuses didn't make sense. And one of the things that I have to do is to communicate to Wall Street that, given the current crisis that we're in, they can't expect help from taxpayers but they enjoy all the benefits that they enjoyed before the crisis happened. You get a sense that, in some institutions, that has not sunk in; that you can't go back to the old way of doing business, certainly not on the taxpayers' dime," Obama said. "Now the flip side is that Main Street has to understand, unless we get these banks moving again, then we can't get this economy to recover. And we don't wanna cut off our nose to spite our face."

"Your Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has been under a lot of pressure this week. And there have been people in Congress calling for his head. …Have there been discussions in the White House about replacing him?" Kroft asked.

"No," Obama said.

Asked if Geithner had volunteered or asked whether to step down, Obama told Kroft, "No. And he shouldn't. And if he were to come to me, I'd say, 'Sorry, Buddy. You've still got the job.' But look, he's got a lot of stuff on his plate. And he is doing a terrific job. And I take responsibility for not, I think, having given him as much help as he needs."

Obama says Geithner is not only responsible for the banks, the bailouts and the automobile industry, he also has to make sure the money is being spent wisely and report to Congress. Yet nearly a dozen high level Treasury department jobs remain unfilled and Geithner still has no deputy. Two people under consideration for the post withdrew their names after going through the vetting process.

"You know, this whole confirmation process, as I mentioned earlier has gotten pretty tough. It's been always tough. It's gotten tougher in the age of 24/7 news cycles. And a lot of people who we think are about to serve in the administration and Treasury suddenly say, 'Well, you know what? I don't wanna go through some of the scrutiny, embarrassment, in addition to taking huge cuts in pay,'" Obama explained.

"Have you offered some of these high level positions [in] the Treasury to people who would have turned them down?" Kroft asked.

"Absolutely. Yeah. And not because people didn't wanna serve. I think that people just felt that, you know, that the process has gotten very onerous," Obama said.

"Your Treasury secretary's plan, Geithner's plan, and your plan really for solving the banking crisis was met with very, very, very tepid response. A lot of people said they didn't understand it. A lot of people said it didn't have any, enough details to solve the problem. I know you're coming out with something next week on this. But these criticisms were coming from people like Warren Buffett, people who had supported you, and you had counted as being your…," Kroft said.

"And Warren still does support me. But I think that understand Warren's also a big player in the financial markets who's a major owner of Wells Fargo. And so he's got a perspective from the perspective of somebody who is part-owner of a bank. You've got members of Congress who've got a different perspective. Which is, 'We don't wanna spend any more taxpayer money.' You've got a whole host of players, all of whom may have a completely different solution. Right?" Obama said.

"And you know, one of the challenges that Tim Geithner has had is the same challenge that anybody would have in this situation. People want a lot of contradictory things. You know, the banks would love a lot of taxpayer money with no strings attached. Folks in Congress, as well as the American people, would love to fix the banks without spending any money. And so at a certain point, you know, you've got just a very difficult line to walk."

"You need the financial community…to solve this crisis," Kroft remarked. "Do you think that the people on Wall Street and the people in the financial community that you need trust you, believe in you?"

"Part of my job is to communicate to them. Look, I believe in the market. I believe in financial innovation. And I believe in success. I want them to do well. But what I also know is that the financial sector was out of balance. You look at how finance used to operate just 20 years ago, or 25 years ago. People, if you went into investment banking, you were making 20 times what a teacher made. You weren't making 200 times what a teacher made," Obama said.

"There is a perception right now, at least in New York, which is where I live and work. …People feel they thought that you were going to be supportive. And now I think there are a lot of people the say, 'Look, we're not gonna be able to keep our best people. They're not gonna stay and work here for $250,000 a year when they can go work for a hedge fund, if they can find one that's still working…and make a lot more," Kroft remarked.

"I've told them directly, 'cause I've heard some of this. They need to spend a little time outside of New York. Because you know, if you go to North Dakota, or you go to Iowa, or you go to Arkansas, where folks would be thrilled to be making $75,000 a year without a bonus, then I think they'd get a sense of why people are frustrated," Obama said.

"I think we have to understand the severity of the crisis that we're in right now. The fact is that, because of bad bets made on Wall Street, there have been enormous losses. I mean there were a whole bunch of folks who, on paper, if you looked at quarterly reports, were wildly successful, selling derivatives that turned out to be…completely worthless," he added.

And they were insuring them.

"Now you know, gosh, I don't think it's me being anti-Wall Street just to point out that the best and the brightest didn't do too well on that front, and that you know, maybe the incentive structures that have been set up have not produced the kinds of long term growth that I think everybody's looking for," Obama said.

Asked if he was surprised at the depth of the recession when he took office, Obama told Kroft, "I don't think that we anticipated how steep the decline would be, particularly in employment. I mean if you look at just, you know, hundreds of thousands - now millions - of jobs being shed over the course of two months or three months, that slope is a lot steeper than anything that we've said we've seen before."

"Now, there's a potential silver lining, which may be that things are so accelerated now, the modern economy is so intertwined and wired, that things happen really fast for ill, but things may recover faster than they have in the past," he added.

"Do you believe that there's still some systemic risk out there? That the financial system could still implode if you had a big failure at AIG or at Citicorp?" Kroft asked.

"Yes," Obama said.

"Citibank?" Kroft asked.

"I think that systemic risks are still out there. And if we did nothing you could still have some big problems. There are certain institutions that are so big that if they fail, they bring a lot of other financial institutions down with them. And if all those financial institutions fail all at the same time, then you could see an even more destructive recession and potentially depression," Obama said. "I'm optimistic about that not happening."

The president said there is a limit to the amount of money the government can spend and print to solve the crisis. Asked if the government is getting close to that limit, Obama said, "The limit is our ability to finance these expenditures through borrowing. And, you know, the United States is fortunate that it has the largest, most stable economic and political system around. And so the dollar is still strong because people are still buying Treasury Bills. They still think that's the safest investment out there."

"If we don't get a handle on this, and also start looking at our long-term deficit projections, at a certain point people will stop buying those Treasury Bills," Obama added.

"Do you have any idea when this might end? Or when things might start getting better?" Kroft asked.

"Well, we're already starting to see flickers of hope out there. Refinancings have significantly increased. Interest rates have never been lower. That promises the possibility at least of the housing market bottoming out and stabilizing. It’s not going to happen equally in every part of the country," Obama said.

On the subject of the ailing automobile industry, the president said he is still committed to helping General Motors and Chrysler avert bankruptcy, but he says they have yet to demonstrate they can remain economically viable. And there are major political obstacles.

"I just wanna say that the only thing less popular than putting money into banks is putting money into the auto industry," Obama said.

"Eighteen percent are in favor," Kroft pointed out. "Seventy-six percent against."

"It's not a high number," Obama acknowledged, with a chuckle.

"You're sitting here. And you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people gonna look at this and say, 'I mean, he's sitting there just making jokes about money.' How do you deal with, I mean, explain the…mood and your laughter," Kroft asked. "Are you punch drunk?"

"No, no. There's gotta be a little gallows humor to get you through the day," Obama explained. "You know, sometimes my team talks about the fact that if you had said to us a year ago that the least of my problems would be Iraq, which is still a pretty serious problem, I don't think anybody would have believed it. But we've got a lot on our plate. And a lot of difficult decisions that we're gonna have to make."

One of those difficult decisions is Afghanistan. Asked what that mission should be, Obama said, "Making sure that al Qaeda cannot attack the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests and our allies. That's our number one priority. And in service of that priority there may be a whole host of things that we need to do. We may need to build up economic capacity in Afghanistan. We may need to improve our diplomatic efforts in Pakistan."

"We may need to bring a more regional diplomatic approach to bear. We may need to coordinate more effectively with our allies. But we can't lose sight of what our central mission is. The same mission that we had when we went in after 9/11. And that is these folks can project violence against the United States' citizens. And that is something that we cannot tolerate," Obama said. "But what we can't do is think that just a military approach in Afghanistan is gonna be able to solve our problems. So what we're looking for is a comprehensive strategy. And there's gotta be an exit strategy. There's gotta be a sense that this is not perpetual drift."

"Afghanistan has proven to be very hard to govern. This should not come as news to anybody given its history," Kroft said. "As the graveyards of empire. And there are people now who are concerned. We need to be careful what we're getting ourselves into in Afghanistan. Because we have come to be looked upon there by people in Afghanistan, and even people now in Pakistan…as another foreign power coming in, trying to take over the region."

"I'm very mindful of that. And so is my national security team. So is the Pentagon. Afghanistan is not going to be easy in many ways. And this is not my assessment. This is the assessment of commanders on the ground," Obama explained.

"Iraq was actually easier than Afghanistan. It's easier terrain. You've got a much better educated population, infrastructure to build off of. You don't have some of the same destabilizing border issues that you have between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And so this is gonna be a tough nut to crack. But it is not acceptable for us to simply sit back and let safe havens of terrorists plan and plot," he added.

"One question about Dick Cheney and Guantanamo. I'm sure you wanna answer this," Kroft said. "A week ago Vice President Cheney said essentially that your willingness to shut down Guantanamo and to change the way prisoners are treated and interrogated was making America weaker and more vulnerable to another attack. And that the interrogation techniques that were used at Guantanamo were essential in preventing another attack against the United States."

"I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney. Not surprisingly. You know, I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests. I think he's drawing the wrong lesson from history," Obama said.

"The facts don't bear him out. I think he is, that attitude, that philosophy has done incredible damage to our image and position in the world. I mean, the fact of the matter is after all these years how many convictions actually came out of Guantanamo? How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment. Which means that there is constant effective recruitment of Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against U.S. interests all around the world," he added.

"Some of it being organized by a few people who were released from Guantanamo," Kroft pointed out.

"Well, there is no doubt that we have not done a particularly effective job in sorting through who are truly dangerous individuals that we've got to make sure are not a threat to us, who are folks that we just swept up. The whole premise of Guantanamo promoted by Vice President Cheney was that somehow the American system of justice was not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists. I fundamentally disagree with that. Now, do these folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter down the block? Of course not," Obama said.

Asked what should be done with these people, Obama said, "Well, I think we're gonna have to figure out a mechanism to make sure that they not released and do us harm. But do so in a way that is consistent with both our traditions, sense of due process, international law. But this is the legacy that's been left behind. And, you know, I'm surprised that the vice president is eager to defend a legacy that was unsustainable. Let's assume that we didn't change these practices. How long are we gonna go? Are we gonna just keep on going until you know, the entire Muslim world and Arab world despises us? Do we think that's really gonna make us safer? I don't know a lot of thoughtful thinkers, liberal or conservative, who think that that was the right approach."

Aside from running the Harvard Law Review and directing his own presidential campaign, President Barack Obama entered the White House with no real executive experience.

Now he is grappling with the challenges of running one of the largest enterprises in the world under the most trying circumstances. How is he handling the pressure, what is an average day like and how are his wife Michelle and their young daughters adjusting? The president talked about all of that as he gave 60 Minutes a tour of the White House grounds.

Asked if he's gotten into a routine, Obama told Kroft, "I have. You know, I typically work out in the morning. Michelle's often there with me. We do our little workout, and then…after the workout, have breakfast, read the papers, read my morning security briefing. And then I come down here and talk to our National Security team. Then we talk to the economic team. After that, who knows? Anything goes. But typically, between 7:00 and 10:00 I sort of know what I'm doing."

Walking on the White House grounds, Obama pointed up at the living quarters of the executive mansion. "This is the living quarters, up on the second floor. We got a gym right over there, up on the third floor. And the second floor is, our bedroom's on this side, and we got a dining room on that side. And, yeah, pretty nice digs," the president told Kroft.

"How are you finding the job?" Kroft asked.

"It's exhilarating. It's challenging you know, I find that the governance part of it, the decision making part of it, actually comes pretty naturally. I think I've got a great team. I think we're making good decisions. The hardest thing about the job is staying focused. Because there's so many demands and decisions that are pressed upon you," Obama explained.

Asked what the hardest decisions has been that he's had to make in the last 60 days, Obama said, "Well, I would say that the decision to send more troops into Afghanistan. You know, I think it's the right thing to do. But it's a weighty decision because we actually had to make the decision prior to the completion of strategic review that we were conducting. When I make a decision to send 17,000 young Americans to Afghanistan, you can understand that intellectually - but understanding what that means for those families, for those young people when you end up sitting at your desk, signing a condolence letter to one of the family members of a fallen hero, you're reminded each and every day at every moment that the decisions you make count."

"What is the most frustrating part of the job?" Kroft asked.

"The fact that you are often confronted with bad choices that flow from less than optimal decisions made a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, when you weren't here," Obama said. "A lot of times, when things land at my desk it's a choice between bad and worse. And as somebody pointed out to me, the only things that land on my desk are tough decisions. Because, if they were easy decisions, somebody down the food chain's already made them."

The president told Kroft he has to make lots of decisions daily - too many to count.

"Every time somebody walks in your office," Kroft remarked.

"There's a decision. Otherwise, they don't get a meeting," Obama said.

For meetings and decisions, Obama said he's always briefed before it happens. "I spend a lot of time reading. People keep on asking me, 'Well, what are you reading these days?' Well, mostly briefing books. You know, you get a little time to read history or you know, policy books that are of interest. But there's a huge amount of information that has to be digested, especially right now. Because the complexities of Afghanistan are matched, maybe even dwarfed, by the complexities of the economic situation. And there are a lot of moving parts to all of that."

Asked if he ever takes a day off, Obama told Kroft, "I do. It's never a full day, but typically Saturdays and Sundays. I'll wander down to the Oval Office I will do some work, but I'll still have time for the kids.

On most days, the president says he and the first lady are able to have a family dinner with their children. And he usually sees his two daughters in the afternoon when they come home from school and pay him a visit in the West Wing. He can look out the window of the Oval Office, and watch them play on their new swing set.

"This is a pretty spectacular swing set," Obama said. "I have to say that I was not the purchaser of this. The admiral, our chief usher, Admiral Steve Rochon, took great interest when we said that we should get a swing set, and found what I assume must be the Rolls Royce of swing sets."

"You didn't have one of these when you were a kid?" Kroft asked.

"I sure did not. I thought we were gonna get like two swings. But they went all out," Obama replied with a chuckle.

The Obamas' daughters have had kids over at the White House after school. "And they've tested this out," Obama said of the swing set. "And it got a thumbs up."

Asked if they're liking it in the White House, Obama said, "You know, they are adapting remarkably in ways that I just would not have expected."

"What's interesting is actually how unimpressed they are with it," the president said. "I mean they're going to school. They are unchanged. They're the same sweet, engaging, happy unpretentious kids that they were"

"And they're having fun," Kroft said.

"They do seem to be have fun. And Michelle is thriving as well. I mean she just started a vegetable garden out here," Obama said. "All the chefs from the White House staff went down there with her. And they started diggin' ground. And they're gonna be planting stuff. And this is part of the message that she wants to send about good nutrition."

Michelle Obama had broken ground for the vegetable garden a few hours earlier on the South Lawn, with the help of some Washington school children; it's just a small patch of land on the sprawling White House grounds that cover 18 acres. As for the 55,000 square foot house, the first family is still exploring the 132 rooms and 35 bathrooms.

The president admitted he has gotten lost in the executive mansion - repeatedly.

"Harry Truman called the White House 'The Great White Jail.' Clinton said he couldn't make up his mind whether it was the finest public housing in America or the jewel of the prison system," Kroft said.

"The bubble that the White House represents is tough," Obama acknowledged. "And one of the things that I am constantly struggling with is how to break out of it. And I've taken to the practice of reading ten letters selected from the 40,000 that we get every night, just to hear from voices outside of my staff. But the inability to just go, and you know, sit at a corner coffee shop and have a chat with people, or just listen to what folks are saying at the next table, that I think, is something that, as president, you’ve gotta constantly fight against."

60 Minutes Obama Defends Geithner (Video)

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60 Minutes Ben Bernanke's Greatest Challenge (Video and Text)

60 Minutes features a rare interview with a Federal Reserve chairman - the first in 20 years - Bernanke tells correspondent Scott Pelley what he thinks went wrong with America's financial system, how it caused the economic crisis, what the Federal Reserve is doing to help fix it and when he expects the crippling recession to end.

In the interview, Bernanke also talks about the failure of Lehman Brothers, the rescue plan for AIG and the Fed’s extraordinary actions taken since the beginning of the economic crisis. The Fed Chairman also discusses how regulations might change in the future.

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"Mr. Chairman, I'm gonna start with a question that everyone wants me to ask: when does this end?" 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley asked Bernanke.

"It depends a lot on the financial system," he replied. "The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis. We've seen some progress in the financial markets, absolutely. But until we get that stabilized and working normally, we're not gonna see recovery. But we do have a plan. We're working on it. And I do think that we will get it stabilized, and we'll see the recession coming to an end probably this year. We'll see recovery beginning next year. And it will pick up steam over time."

Asked if he thinks the recession is going to end this year, Bernanke said, "In the sense that this decline will begin to moderate and we'll begin to see leveling off. We won't be back to full employment. But we will see, I hope, the end of these declines that have been so strong in a last couple of quarters."

"But you wouldn't say at this point that we're out of the woods?" Pelley asked.

"No," Bernanke replied. "I think the key issue is the banking system and the financial system."

"Unemployment, as we sit here, is about 8.1 percent. I wonder, do you expect double digit unemployment?" Pelley asked.

"Well, it's hard to forecast exactly where we're going. Unemployment is rising. Job losses are still very severe. And no doubt, the unemployment rate's gonna go higher than it is. But I think, again, that if we do succeed in stabilizing the financial system, that we'll begin to see a slower pace of decline, and eventually, a stabilization that will set the basis for a recovery," Bernanke said.

"You seem to be saying that we're not heading into a new American Depression?" Pelley asked.

"I think we've averted that risk. I think we've gotten past that and now the problem is to get the thing working properly again," the chairman said.

Bernanke, age 55, has been chairman of the Federal Reserve Board since 2006. He had previously served as a Fed governor, then chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, before being appointed as Fed chairman by President George W. Bush.

For this interview, he opened up the Fed headquarters, rarely seen by the public. It's a monumental building along the National Mall. Construction started in 1935 in the depths of the Great Depression.

"You know Mr. Chairman I think the Federal Reserve, for most people, is a mystery," Pelley remarked.

"Well, it's an institution that people don't hear so much about but it's a very important one. It manages monetary policy for the country. It's one of the main tools we have for stabilizing our economy and keeping prices stable," Bernanke said.

Asked when it was founded, Bernanke told Pelley, "The Fed was created by Congress in 1913. And its original purpose was to deal with financial panics, which is what we're doing right now."

Bernanke's crisis started in 2007 with the mortgage meltdown; lenders began to fail. Bernanke cut interest rates repeatedly. In 2008, the Fed stopped the collapse of Bear Stearns by arranging a sale to another firm.

But then came the end of Wall Street as we knew it. Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were seized by the government. On Sept. 14, Merrill Lynch was sold in distress. The next day, the 158-year-old investment bank Lehman Brothers failed

"You didn't rescue Lehman Brothers. It set off a worldwide panic when it went bankrupt. And I wonder, looking back, whether you think that was a mistake," Pelley asked.

"There were many people who said, 'Let 'em fail.' You know, 'It's not a problem. The markets will take care of it.' And I think I knew better than that. And Lehman proved that you cannot let a large internationally active firm fail in the middle of a financial crisis. Now was it a mistake? It wasn't a mistake for the following reason: we didn't have the option, we didn't have the tools. All the Federal Reserve can do is make loans against collateral," Bernanke replied.

The day after Lehman, Bernanke's Fed did something astounding: it loaned $85 billion to a company that wasn't a bank at all - American International Group (AIG), the global insurance giant that was also involved in backing risky mortgage investments. Bernanke says, unlike Lehman, the Fed could make the loans based on good collateral in AIG's portfolio.

"There have now been four rescues of AIG, $160 billion. Why is that necessary?" Pelley asked.

"Let me just first say that of all the events and all of the things we've done in the last 18 months, the single one that makes me the angriest, that gives me the most angst, is the intervention with AIG. Here was a company that made all kinds of unconscionable bets. Then, when those bets went wrong, we had a situation where the failure of that company would have brought down the financial system," Bernanke said.

"You say it makes you angry?" Pelley asked.

"It makes me angry. I slammed the phone more than a few times on discussing AIG. I understand why the American people are angry. It's absolutely unfair that taxpayer dollars are going to prop up a company that made these terrible bets, that was operating out of the sight of regulators, but which we have no choice but the stabilize, or else risk enormous impact, not just in the financial system, but on the whole U.S. economy," Bernanke explained.

By September, Bernanke and then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson went to Capitol Hill to urge a massive bailout of the banking system, which lawmakers soon passed.

Asked how close of a call it was, Bernanke said, "It was very close. It was very close. The Congress passed the bill that gave Treasury the right to put capital into the banks in the first week of October. And it was in the second week of October that the crisis reached its peak. If we had not had those powers, we could have had a much, much worse outcome. So it was a very dangerous situation."

"Was anyone on Capitol Hill skeptical? Did they push back at all, you know, 'Mr. Chairman, it's probably not quite that bad'?" Pelley asked.

"Well, I do remember one conversation I had where I was addressing a caucus of congressmen. And a congressman said to me, 'Mr. Chairman, you know, I'm talking to bankers in my town. I'm talking to shopkeepers in my town. And they say things are normal. Nothing's going on. We don't see any problem.' And I turned to him and I said, 'You will,'" Bernanke recalled.

That second week of October, the Dow fell 18 percent - its worst week in history. At that point, $8 trillion had been lost.

In the crisis, Bernanke had freedom to act immediately - he doesn't need permission from Congress or the president. While they debated on Capitol Hill, Bernanke cut interest rates nearly to zero; then he used Depression-era emergency powers to launch a dozen rescue programs of his own. There was support for money market funds, mortgages, short term lending to small business, and support for auto loans, student loans and small business loans - commitments of a trillion dollars, doubling the size of the Fed's balance sheet.

Asked if it's tax money the Fed is spending, Bernanke said, "It's not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank. So, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It's much more akin to printing money than it is to borrowing."

"You've been printing money?" Pelley asked.

"Well, effectively," Bernanke said. "And we need to do that, because our economy is very weak and inflation is very low. When the economy begins to recover, that will be the time that we need to unwind those programs, raise interest rates, reduce the money supply, and make sure that we have a recovery that does not involve inflation."

He's not kidding about printing money: the Fed issues U.S. currency, which is why it says "Federal Reserve Note" on all the bills in your wallet. The Treasury Department's Bureau of Engraving and Printing is just a few blocks from Bernanke's office. It prints the money at the Fed's request.

The Fed's mandate from Congress is to put enough money i the system for maximum employment, but not so much that it sets off inflation.

The Fed actually pays for itself and returns billions in profits to the Treasury.

In a sense, Bernanke has been preparing for this emergency his whole professional life. He got a PhD in economics from MIT. He chaired the economics department at Princeton, where his specialty was the Great Depression.

He's among many economists who now believe it was the Federal Reserve itself that helped turn a recession in 1929 into a global calamity.

"They made two mistakes, basically. One was they let the money supply contract very sharply. Prices fell. Deflation. So monetary policy was, in fact, very contractionary. Very tight during that period. And then the second mistake they made was they let the banks fail. They didn't make any strong effort to prevent the failure of thousands of banks. And that failure had terrible effects on credit and on the ability of the economy to right itself," Bernanke explained.

Bernanke told 60 Minutes we were close to a second Depression and he is determined to not let the major banks fail on his watch.

"One of the things that I think many people watching this interview don't understand, is why there are multiple bailouts, four bailouts of AIG, three bailouts of Citigroup. There is a sense that this is a band-aid approach, that we're not getting to the root of the problem," Pelley remarked.

"Well, part of the issue is that, you know, the economy has gotten a good bit worse. You know, the first part of the crisis was subprime and other assets that were toxic. Now, we're in a second phase, which is that the economy is very weak," he said. "So the economy's weakness has meant that some of the initial attempts to stabilize the banks haven't been enough, and we've had to do more."

"You know, Mr. Chairman, there are so many people outside this building, across this country, who say, 'To hell with them. They made bad bets. The wages of failure on Wall Street should be failure,'" Pelley remarked.

"Let me give you an analogy, if I might," Bernanke said. "If you have a neighbor, who smokes in bed. And he's a risk to everybody. If suppose he sets fire to his house, and you might say to yourself, you know, 'I'm not gonna call the fire department. Let his house burn down. It's fine with me.' But then, of course, but what if your house is made of wood? And it's right next door to his house? What if the whole town is made of wood? Well, I think we'd all agree that the right thing to do is put out that fire first, and then say, 'What punishment is appropriate? How should we change the fire code? What needs to be done to make sure this doesn't happen in the future? How can we fire proof our houses?' That's where we are now. We have a fire going on."

Bernanke told Pelley that "fire" is still burning.

Asked if all the big banks the Fed regulates are solvent, Bernanke said, "I believe they are, yes. But we are doing a stress test right now, where we're looking at what the positions of the banks are under a tougher economic scenario than the one that we currently expect. And what we plan to do is to say how much capital would each bank need to be well capitalized. Not just solvent, but well capitalized, even in these more adverse scenarios."

"Are you committing in this interview, that you are not going to let any of these banks fail? That no matter what their balance sheet actually looks like, they are not gonna fail?" Pelley asked.

"They are not gonna fail," Bernanke said. "But what we can do, should it be necessary, is try to wind it down in a safe way."

In other words, Bernanke thinks government should stabilize failed financial companies and take them apart slowly. "So, for example, in the case of AIG, we've prevented a bankruptcy, because of the chaos that would create. But we're also demanding that AIG divest itself, sell off its subsidiaries, and use the proceeds to pay back the government," he said.

"What are the dangers now? What keeps you up at night?" Pelley asked.

"I think the biggest risk is that, you know, we don't have the political will. We don't have the commitment to solve this problem, and that we let it just continue. In which case, you know, we can't count on recovery," Bernanke said.

The Fed estimates the wealth of American families fell 18 percent in 2008, the worst since the Great Depression.

Ben Bernanke is doing things with the Federal Reserve that have never been done before. It may be because he's not a creature of Washington or Wall Street.

He grew up, middle class, the smartest kid in a town now falling on hard times. He told Pelley, because the Fed is so powerful, it should be more open.

Bernanke meets with his six fellow governors of the Federal Reserve - all of them appointed by the president of the United States - at the Fed's headquarters. Bernanke also chairs the Federal Open Market Committee, which decides interest rates.

Those meetings, which take place inside the Fed’s boardroom in Washington, are secret. Asked why, Bernanke took Pelley inside the boardroom and explained, "If we held those things with a TV camera on us it would create lots of volatility and problems in the market. But I should say that, you know, we've come a long way. In 1994, when the Fed made a policy decision to change interest rates, wouldn't even announce that we made a change. But now, after every meeting, we put out a statement, say what we did, explain what we did, why we're doing it. And three weeks later, we put out minutes to describe everything that happened in the meeting. So we're becoming much more transparent."

"When I called and proposed this interview about a year ago, your representative laughed out loud. And said, 'The Fed chairman never does an interview.' Why are you doing this?" Pelley asked.

"Well, it's an extraordinary time. It's an extraordinary time. This is a chance for me, I think, to talk to America directly," Bernanke said.

It's also a chance for America to understand where he comes from.

Ben Shalom Bernanke grew up in one of the few Jewish families in Dillon, S.C., today a town of 6,000 people.

His grandfather, Jonas, immigrated from Eastern Europe, landed at Ellis Island, and came to Dillon to start a drug store.

"Our family came here in 1941. My grandfather, Jonas Bernanke bought this building, made it to the JB Drugs, after his initials," Bernanke told Pelley.

Later, his father and uncle took over the store which has since become a restaurant.

"We're sitting on this corner where your family's store was. And I see it's Main Street. People feel like guys like you are tuned into what happens on Wall Street and you forget places like this," Pelley remarked.

"I come from Main Street. That's my background," Bernanke said. "I've never been on Wall Street. And I care about Wall Street for one reason and one reason only because what happens on Wall Street matters to Main Street. And if we don't have stabilization in the financial markets, if we don't take the steps necessary to make sure that credit is flowing again, then my father couldn't get a loan to build his new store."

Bernanke and Pelley went to the old neighborhood the Bernankes left years ago. A recent owner couldn't quite make the mortgage, so the economy literally hit home.

"When you first heard that your childhood home had gone into foreclosure, what did you think?" Pelley asked.

"Well, I was sorry to hear it. But, you know, in a way, I wasn't surprised. Dillon has taken, you know, a pretty big hit in the economic downturn. Unemployment rate's about 14 percent. And there have been a good number of foreclosures and plant closings and those things I think about that," Bernanke said.

Numbers were always Bernanke's thing: he taught himself calculus and got an SAT score of 1590 out of 1600. A friend talked him into aiming high for college.

"I came home from school one day and there was a phone call for me. And I picked up the phone. They said, 'This is the Harvard Admissions Department. We'd like to let you know that you're accepted in the freshman class.' And I said, 'Come on, who is this really?' But my parents had their doubts about my leaving and going too far from home," Bernanke recalled.

"No! Wait a minute. Your parents weren't thrilled that you were going to Harvard?" Pelley asked.

"My mother was definitely against it. First of all, she said, you know, 'You don't have the clothes. You won't be able to dress properly for Harvard. And it's a long way from here. How you gonna come home on holidays and so on.' So, my parents ate into their savings to let me go, which I'm always grateful for."

Bernanke helped pay for college working construction and working at "South of the Border" - the future chairman of the Fed wore a poncho and waited tables.

Asked what he learned about work, Bernanke said, "Work is hard, that in order to feed your family and to give your kids opportunities you, it's not an easy thing."

Back in the marble confines of the Federal Reserve, Bernanke told Pelley he understands that many Americans are afraid.

"I've been kicking around the country. I spoke to a woman in Ohio, who took her son out of college, because she got laid off. I spoke to a woman in Nevada, who has an advanced stage of cancer. And she was told by her county hospital that they couldn't treat her because a hole had been blown in the state budget. What do you say to those people?" Pelley asked.

"Well, I got into economics, because I wanted to make things better for the average person. When I see a job loss number, 650,000, like we saw last month, I know that's not just a number. That's 650,000 lives that have been disrupted. Families that have had to move or take children out of school. Houses that may be in danger of foreclosure. I know something about what people are going through," Bernanke said.

And that makes it all the more outrageous when he hears of financial firms handing out perks and bonuses after they've taken bailout money. "The era of this high living, this is over now. And that they need to be responsible and use the money constructively," he said.

"And you would say what to those bankers right now in this interview?" Pelley asked.

"I'd say that their job right now is to find a way to make loans to creditworthy borrowers, to get their banks back on the path of making good loans, safe loans, and to have a reasonable sense of humility based on, you know, what's happened in the last 18 months," he replied.

We asked Bernanke what it's been like at the office the last 18 months, with his staff working 80 hour weeks.

"I noticed when we were in your office. You have a couch in there. You [have] been sleeping on that couch?" Pelley asked.

"Once in a while," Bernanke said. "And sometimes, it goes through the weekend. Sometimes it goes overnight."

The Federal Reserve is the life blood of the banking system. Its 12 regional banks are clearing houses for commercial banks.

One of the vaults associated with the Reserve Bank is in New York. Robots carry cash in the vault that's as big as a football field and four stories high. Each pallet, loaded with $100 bills, is worth $64 million. The Fed has 22,000 employees. It clears your checks and your ATM withdrawals. And it provides economic forecasts.

But one of its most important responsibilities is regulating the nation's biggest banks, to be the watchdog.

"You're supposed to keep them out of trouble. So, how did all this happen?" Pelley asked.

"Well, a lot of mistakes got made. No question about it. But, you know, this was a much bigger thing than any single firm or any single individual," Bernanke replied. "Over the last dozen years or so, enormous amounts of savings has flowed into the United States, and some other industrial countries. That savings has come from China and East Asia. It's come from oil producers. And hundreds of billions of dollars, it has come into our financial system. And, you know, that would be great if we took that money and invested it wisely, and got a high return. But instead, our financial system didn't do a good job. We had a regulatory system that was like a sandcastle on the beach. When you had little small waves just lapping up against the sand castle, everything looked good. But when you had a big breaker come in, suddenly the system wasn't strong enough to deal with it."

"Does the Federal Reserve bear any responsibility for missing what was happening to the banks, as it was happening?" Pelley asked.

"Well, like other regulators, we probably could have done more. We've already done a lot of - put a lot of effort into reviewing our practices. And reviewing the bank's practices. We are trying to strengthen our regulation at every point that we can. So, I don't want to deny that we certainly could have done a better job, and others could have done a better job," Bernanke conceded.

Now President Obama and the Congress have a fiscal stimulus plan of nearly $800 billion. There's that separate bailout for financial firms - at least $700 billion. And plans are developing for a way that would take on the bad debt of crippled institutions.

"There was a panic in 1907. So the Fed was created to prevent that from ever happening again. And then we got the Great Depression. And now we have this. How do we prevent this from occurring another time?" Pelley asked.

"Well, tougher regulation of large firms. It includes having a set of laws that allows us to wind down. A large, internationally active firm, without the adverse impacts on the markets that a disorderly bankruptcy would have. It includes possibly having a systemic regulator. A regulator that has some responsibility to look at the system as a whole," Bernanke said.

"Your response has been to do what the Fed didn't do in 1929, and that is pour money into the system. But there's an argument made today that that's not what the problem is. The problem isn't that there's too little money in the system. The problem is there's too much fear in the system. That with these companies being propped up by the government, no one on Wall Street can tell who's solvent and who's not. And therefore, business does not move," Pelley pointed out.

"Well, I absolutely agree that confidence is key," Bernanke said. "People don't know what's happening. And they're afraid. And they're not sure what, you know, whether or not the system is gonna recover. So, how do you get confidence, that's the question. And I think the way to get confidence is to show progress."

Asked if he's seeing any progress, Bernanke said, "I think all of our efforts, so far, have produced results. We're buying about $500 billion in mortgages, in package and securities by the G.S.E.s, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And that seems to have brought down mortgage rates significantly. It allows people to refinance. To get out of high rate mortgages. We are seeing progress in the money market mutual funds, and in the business lending area. And I think as those green shoots begin to appear in different markets and as some confidence begins to come back that will begin the positive dynamic that brings our economy back."

"Do you see green shoots?" Pelley asked.

"I do. I do see green shoots. And not everywhere, but certainly in some of the markets that we've been functioning in. And we've seen some improvement in the banks, as well," Bernanke said.

Asked what the first signs of recovery will be, Bernanke told Pelley, "Well, I think that one sign would be that a large bank is successful in raising private equity. Right now, all the private money is sitting on the sidelines saying, 'We don't know what these banks are worth. We don't know that they're stable.' And they're not willing to put their money into the banks."

"If you had a message for the American People in this interview, what would it be?" Pelley asked.

"Scott, I'd say three things. I'd say, first of all, that the Federal Reserve is here, and is gonna do everything possible to support this recovery. The second thing I would say is that we have to understand, though, that recovery is not gonna happen until the financial markets and the banks are stabilized. And we do have a plan, we have a program for that. But it's gonna take some patience," Bernanke said.

"But the third and final thing I'd just like to say to the American People is that I have every confidence that this economy will recover, and recover in a strong and sustained way. The American people are among the most productive in the world. We have the best technologies. We have great universities. We have entrepreneurs. I just have every confidence that as we get through this crisis, that our economy will begin to grow again, and it will remain the most powerful and dynamic economy in the world."

Bob DeMarco is a citizen journalist and twenty year Wall Street veteran. Bob has written more than 500 articles with more than 11,000 links to his work on the Internet. Content from All American Investor has been syndicated on Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Pluck, Blog Critics, and a growing list of newspaper websites. Bob is actively seeking syndication and writing assignments.