And so what I expect from my team is to constantly be guided by evidence, facts, talking through all the best arguments, drawing from all the best perspectives, and then talking the best course of action possible given the fact that there are some big uncertainties and that sometimes what people may want may actually be contradictory. So, for example, lately, people have been concerned  understandably  about the decline in the market. Well, the reason the market’s declining is because the economy’s declining and it’s generating a lot of bad news, not surprisingly. And so what I’m focused on is fixing the underlying economy. That’s ultimately what’s going to fix the markets, but in the interim you’ve got some folks who would love to see us artificially prop up the market by just putting in more taxpayer money which in the short term could make bank balance sheets look better, you know, make creditors and bondholders and shareholders of these financial institutions feel better and you could get a little blip. But we’d be in the exact same spot as we were six, eight, 10 months from now. So what I’ve got to do is make sure that we’re focused on the underlying economy and if we do that right, if we do that well, and I’m confident that we will, then after some very tough times, and after a lot of hardship on the part of some of the people that I hear from every day who’ve lost their jobs or don’t have health insurance or what have you, that we’re going to get this economy moving again. And I think over the long term we’re going to be much better off.

Q. Are you sleeping sir or is it hard to sleep?

A. Ohhhhh, I always sleep because when I’m not sleeping I’m working.

Q. You never feel burdened by it, though? You’ve come into  there are so many problems that the country faces. Do you feel the weight of that now as president?

A. As I said feel as if I’ve got a great team and we are making the best decisions under the circumstances. Do I wish that I had the luxury of maybe dealing with one monumental problem at a time during the course of the year? Of course and in fact, you know, you’ve been hearing sort of our opposition lately saying, ‘Well, he’s trying to do this and that and the other, and he shouldn’t  ‘Look, I wish I had the luxury of just dealing with a modest recession or just dealing with health care or just dealing with energy or just dealing with Iraq or just dealing with Afghanistan. I don’t have that luxury and I don’t think the American people do either. We’ve got to use this moment to solve some big problems once and for all so that the next generation is not saddled with even worse problems than we have right now. All right? Thanks.

******

At 2:30 p.m., President Obama called The New York Times, saying he wanted to clarify a point from the interview. Here is a transcript of that brief call:

President Obama: Just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter. It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question. I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn’t under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn’t on my watch. And it wasn’t on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement  the prescription drug plan without a source of funding. And so I think it’s important just to note when you start hearing folks throw these words around that we’ve actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word socialist around can’t say the same.

Q. So who’s watch are we talking about here?

A. Well, I just think it’s clear by the time we got here, there already had been an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system. And the thing I constantly try to emphasize to people if that coming in, the market was doing fine, nobody would be happier than me to stay out of it. I have more than enough to do without having to worry the financial system. The fact that we’ve had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk taking has precipitated a crisis.

I think that covers it.