A Political Salesman Lays It on the Line

President-elect Barack Obama said today that only the federal government is big enough to prevent economic recession from lasting for years to come. Calling the America's economic crisis "no accident of history," he decried "an era of irresponsibility" from Wall Street to Washington and warned that "a bad situation could become dramatically worse" if Congress fails to act soon. But sounding more like a president than a president-elect he observed that the seeds of the problem provide hope for overcoming what he called a "devastating loss of trust and confidence…" We hear more about how bad things are, what Obama proposes and the prospects for improvement if he gets what he wants. Were years of "prosperity" really a sham? What's in store for America's standard of living?