President Obama faces the press

President Barack Obama faced the White House Press Corps as well as cameras sending his image all around the world Monday night as he delivered his grim economic message at his first prime time press conference.

Here are some highlights from President Obama's talking points and answers:

"If you delay acting on an economy of this severity, then you potentially create a negative spiral that becomes much more difficult for us to get out of. We saw this happen in Japan in the 1990s, where they did not act boldly and swiftly enough, and as a consequence they suffered what was called the 'lost decade' where essentially for the entire '90s they did not see any significant economic growth."

"That's why the figure that we initially came up with of approximately $800 billion was put forward. That wasn't just some random number that I plucked out of a hat. That was Republican and Democratic, conservative and liberal economists that I spoke to who indicated that given the magnitude of the crisis and the fact that it's happening worldwide, it's important for us to have a bill of sufficient size and scope that we can save or create 4 million jobs. That still means that you're going to have some net job loss, but at least we can start slowing the trend and moving it in the right direction. "

"And so tomorrow my Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, will be announcing some very clear and specific plans for how we are going to start loosening up credit once again. And that means having some transparency and oversight in the system. It means that we correct some of the mistakes with TARP that were made earlier, the lack of consistency, the lack of clarity in terms of how the program was going to move forward."

"And so my national security team is currently reviewing our existing Iran policy, looking at areas where we can have constructive dialogue, where we can directly engage with them. And my expectation is in the coming months we will be looking for openings that can be created where we can start sitting across the table, face to face, diplomatic overtures that will allow us to move our policy in a new direction. "

"I think my initial measure of success is creating or saving 4 million jobs. That's bottom line number one, because if people are working, then they've got enough confidence to make purchases, to make investments. Businesses start seeing that consumers are out there with a little more confidence, and they start making investments, which means they start hiring workers. So step number one, job creation. "

"You know, I don't remember exactly what Joe was referring to. (Laughter.) Not surprisingly. But let me try this out. I think what Joe may have been suggesting, although I wouldn't put numerical -- I wouldn't ascribe any numerical percentage to any of this -- is that given the magnitude of the challenges that we have, any single thing that we do is going to be part of the solution, not all of the solution."