Continuing to pursue banks to help with their share of the recovery effort, the President had another meeting with bank CEOs to enlist their help to by convincing them to offer more loans to small business. The president made it clear that he expects banks who have received unprecedented aid from the the nation's tax payer in the form of bailouts, that they have an obligation to help.

President Obama also mentioned the ongoing financial reform negotiations between Congress, the White House, and financial institutions. He said that the various CEOs are all on board with consumer protections, but that what he was hearing in the White House was not what lobbyists were doing in practice. Anything less than concrete consumer protection would more than likely be considered a failure by progressives as well as those who want to end Wall Street gambling practices.

The recurring theme however, was was one of shame.  Shaming banks to encourage them to start lending again because they just won't lend to small business and that hurts any the recovery time frame.  I'm not exactly sure why there has been so much difficulty in Congress to draft financial reform legislation, other than the massive amounts of money being spent by lobbyists, but for now it seems like the President it continuing to try his hand at focusing the nations anger and attention on financial institutions. It's smart really, to remind the tax payer that it was they who bailed out high paid bankers from their own greed under threat of a compete economic collapse.

More than anything this meeting and press conference is an indication from the President that he is well aware of the public concern over jobs and that he is pursuing any and all options.  Politically, he is trying to stay ahead of the quickly approaching 2010 mid term elections and it's important for Democrats to minimize losses. The Republicans don't need to do anything different from what they've already been doing, which is essentially be obstructionist, and while every majority party loses seats during the midterms, the case can be made in this situation that it's all about the jobs.

Take a look at the video below: