We are in the midst of a serious financial crisis, and the federal government is responding

with decisive action.

Hello and welcome to WhistleStop, a podcast of the presidency.

I'm John Dickerson of 60 Minutes.

The economy is humming now.

Unemployment is at half-century low of 3.6%.

The gross domestic product is at 3.2%. Consumer

confidence is at a 15-year high. Happy days are here again, right? No. They're here, but they're here

until they're not here. The presidency is a job of emergencies, managing them and preparing for them.

The global markets move so fast now, economic emergencies can sneak up as fast as a devastating terrorist attack.

Will a president be ready? Will the political system be ready?

These are our questions today.

So even in a time of a humming economy, if you're thinking about the presidency, you always

have to think about when it isn't. Speaking of that, in the fall of 2007, the American economy came

close to total collapse. It was a surprise to most experts. Talking to Treasury Secretary

Robert Rubin recently, he served in the Clinton administration,

he said a lot of people talked about slack in the system, but no one talked about the greatest

collapse in the economy since the Great Depression. The panic that followed in 2007 echoes

throughout our economy today. Still, the lessons are fading because the system

wants us to forget. Political majorities survive by boosting economic performance. Political

majorities don't stay in power by telling everybody that the ceiling is about to fall. And both

parties depend on donations from the employees of financial institutions

...