If we have a shortage of one thing in America… it is leadership.

I just heard our President on the radio this morning attempting to scare the shit out of us. That isn’t leadership.

A real leader would say:

I’m not going to lie to you. I believe in you and I know you can handle the truth.

We may have some tough times ahead. As a nation, we’ve over spent and we’ve accumulated too much debt. Housing prices grew too high, too fast. Huge numbers of Americans gambled and speculated and lost. There is very little we can or should do to prop up these assets. Their peak value was phony.

The good news is, if we take our lumps now, this will be relatively short. About 6-18 months. We are innovative and hard working and we will make it through this. Once we have cleaned the sludge from our economic engine, we will emerge stronger than ever before.

We are not wimps. We are not cowards. We will not run from this challenge. We will not pay off our sick mortgages with another toxic mortgage. We will not dump this on our children and our grandchildren. We will face the consequences of our actions because we have the courage and the integrity to accept responsibility for our own greed.

The government in partnership with big finance created this problem. Many of us made the absurd assumption that real estate prices could not fall and we were wrong. I’m am going to do everything I can to insure this never happens again. I’ve released a 25 point plan to prevent the government from creating another economic bubble.

The government doesn’t make this economy run, you do. The answer to this problem doesn’t lie here in Washington. We created the problem and it is pure hubris to believe we can fix it with more debt. Don’t look to us for the answer, looking to us got you in this mess.

You, the American people are the answer to this problem. Get out there and work hard, innovate, compete, and create. BUT DO NOT TRY TO GAME THE SYSTEM! Create real value for each other and you will be just fine.

You will make it through this because you are resilient and for the first time in many generations we are going to face the situation we created.