President Barack Obama said Monday he would set up an independent board to review the government's messy $700 billion financial bailout program and predicted that some of America's troubled banks still could fail. The president also said that he was taking full responsibility for rescuing the U.S. economy, which is facing its worst downturn in 80 years. He faces a massive challenge on two economic fronts: bailing out the crippled US financial sector and putting together a stimulus package that will turn around rising unemployment and skyrocketing foreclosure rates. “If I don't have this done in three years then there's going to be a one-term proposition,” Obama said, already looking forward to the 2012 presidential election. Administration officials, the Federal Reserve and top banking officials are working on proposals for how the government will use the last $350 billion from the $700 billion rescue program, with some lawmakers clamoring for greater oversight. And later Monday, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will meet with congressional leaders at the White House to again press Congress to move swiftly on his $800 billion-plus economic stimulus package. Obama said the bailout was not going to save every US bank. “It is likely that the banks have not fully acknowledged all the losses that they're going to experience. They're going to have to write down those losses. And some banks won't make it,” Obama said in an NBC television interview that was taped on Sunday. But he assured Americans that their bank accounts were not in danger. “All deposits are going to be safe for ordinary people. But we're going to have to wring out some of these bad assets,” he said. The president demurred when asked if he planned to set up a so-called “bad bank” plan, under which the federal government would take on the bad debts and investments of financial institutions. He suggested, however, that something like that was in the works, and that American taxpayers would become owners of stock in those banks and investment houses. “Over time, as the market confidence is restored, then what we can do is start getting rid of these assets, some of the stocks that taxpayers now have in some of these companies start being worth more,” he said. On the stimulus plan, Obama said Sunday that he was confident Republicans eventually would support a final version of the legislation, which he said would save or create 3 to 4 million jobs. Every Republican in the House of Representatives voted against the measure in a vote last week in the lower house. The Senate begins debating its version of the measure on Monday. “I am confident that by the time we have the final package on the floor that we are going to see substantial support, and people are going to see this is a serious effort. It has no earmarks. We are going to be trimming out things that are not relevant to putting people back to work right now,” Obama said. On Sunday, a key Democratic senator, New York's Charles Schumer, said he was open to Republican proposals that would provide a $15,000 tax credit to every home buyer and lowering mortgage interest rates to 4.5 percent.
