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President Obama went on the defensive yesterday evening in his second prime-time news conference defending his Treasury Secretary’s plan to save the financial sector with $1 trillion of tax payer money. The President took questions from reporters for nearly an hour during a conference that almost entirely focused on the economy. He was grilled about the bonuses received by AIG executives, the growing budget deficit, health care, and other issues. Geithner’s so-called private-public partnership would give investors federal money to buy up toxic assets. Many have criticized the plan as relying on investor greed as a fuel to fix the economy. But if the plan works, theoretically banks would be able to free themselves of enough bad debt to be able to make good loans. That’s a big “if” however. Meanwhile the President is planning an online town-hall style meeting on the economy tomorrow evening on the White House’s website at whitehouse.gov.

GUEST: Dr. Richard Wolff, professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, featured in a new film by the Media Education Foundation called Capitalism Hits the Fan