Obama to speak Monday on financial crisis

On Monday, five years after the failure of Lehman Brothers and subsequent stock market crash brought the U.S. economy to depths from which it is still recovering, President Obama will address the nation from the Rose Garden.

The White House announced the speech on Saturday, saying the president will “discuss the progress we have made to create 7.5 million private-sector jobs.”

Mr. Obama was elected less than two months after the September 2008 financial crisis began. The first domino to fall was the Sept. 15 failure of Lehman Bros.; the next day, the stock market sunk.

Multiple financial institutions would go on to fail, while others survived only through the controversial government bailout program. As a result, unemployment would rise dramatically over the next year

Repairing the damaged economy has proved difficult for the Obama administration. The jobless rate remains stubbornly high, and critics argue that many of the president’s policy initiatives — most notably Obamacare — are hindering, not helping, a true financial recovery.

Over the past several years, Mr. Obama repeatedly has promised to refocus his administration on the economy, but a variety of events, most recently the use of chemical weapons by the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, have distracted from that aim.

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Monday’s address will be yet another attempt by the president to turn attention back to the economy.

According to the White House, the speech will focus heavily on Mr. Obama’s efforts to build a “better bargain for the middle class, and warn against more self-inflicted wounds from Washington.”

The president will be joined on stage and in the audience by those who “have benefited from his economic recovery proposals over the last five years, including small business owners, construction workers, homeowners, consumers and tax cut recipients,” the White House said.