I am watching Fox news and Steve Forbes is on.  Right before Steve came on  they did  a story on Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway and they concluded with "while profits were down 63 percent, Warren Buffet made money in 2008". 

Well in the world of mark to market, Berkshire Hathaway did not make money in 2009, it lost boat loads.

Mark to market created the problem on the way up, lending on mark up gains to the capital invested.  On the way down It is wiping out the capital and confidence.  It is not wiping out just the mark up on the capital, it is wiping out the capital by destroying  the confidence and  therefore the market.   

(as a note, there  are some well founded  reasons for confidence to be shaken:  Madoff, Stanford, Hedgefunds, lack of regulations, lack of enforcement of what few regulations exist, Citibank, Merril Lynch, SEC, Federal Reserve,  Goldman Sachs, etc.)

President Obama,

Eliminate mark to market, put back the uptick rule, reduce the maximum leverage of any financial institution to no more than 5 to 1, and develop a tax code Secretary Geitner, Senator Daschle, and Rep. Charlie Rangel can fill out by themselves in less than eight hours. 

Do these things and the economy will right itself and you will be re-elected in a land slide.

I look at Bonneville Power Administration and how that one capital investment during the Great Depression changed the Pacific Northwest's economy for the next 100 years.  Most of those economic changes benefited the region and contributed greatly to GDP, there was also harm, the loss of salmon runs.  President Obama, you really missed a great opportunity the change the National economy for the next 100 years by not investing more of your stimulus in infrastructure.