MS. PERINO: Let me tell you something, if he wasn't talking all the time, I can guarantee you the questions from the media would be to me, why is the President not talking; the markets have gone down everyday; the President needs to get out there. We're trying to strike the best possible balance that we can. President Bush recognizes that as the leader of this country, when the -- Americans are facing probably more anxiety than they've ever felt in their lives, that it is important that they know that the leader of the free world has his full attention focused on helping solve this problem. That's the purpose of our communications.

And it's also to remind people that we're not going to be able to snap our fingers and get our way out of this problem. The remarks this morning were never billed as a panacea to make the markets go up. We don't try to affect daily market movements. What we're trying to do is stop the bleeding, strengthen the markets, return it to -- return people's confidence. Because what happens is we have a vicious cycle -- there's anxiety, which is causing the uncertainty, which causes the market to go down, which produces further anxiety.

seen at 09:00, 10 October in Whitehouse Press Briefings. Email this to a friend.
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