When: March 27th at 3PM-5PM ET
Where: Closing Bell

Following is the unofficial transcript of a FIRST ON CNBC interview with Senator Barack Obama on CNBC's "Closing Bell."

All references must be sourced to CNBC's "Closing Bell."

Mark Stahl Barack Obama

MARIA BARTIROMO, host: Senator, thank you for joining us.

Senator BARACK OBAMA: Thank you so much for having me.

BARTIROMO: Nearly seven months before Election Day, we've got foreclosures on the rise...

Sen. OBAMA: Right.

BARTIROMO: ...we've got financial assets shrinking, gasoline above $3 a gallon. Detail for us your economic plan to take us higher.

Sen. OBAMA: Yeah. Well, it's going to start with dealing with the immediate crisis, both in the financial markets and in the housing market. And obviously, those things are connected.

On the housing market, to prevent foreclosures, I think it is important for us to create some bottom, some floor, give people some sense of where does this end. And so I am a strong proponent of the proposal that Chris Dodd and Barney Frank have put forward, having the FHA step in to help stabilize the market. It's not a bailout for borrowers or lenders, but what it says is we will rework some of these loan packages so that they're affordable. And, you know, everybody's going to have to take a haircut, the borrowers and the lenders, but it won't be as bad as if a foreclosure took place. So that'd be step number one.

Step number two, I think to stabilize and provide confidence in the financial markets it is appropriate for the Fed to take some of the actions that it has. But I think it is also important to make sure that we've coupled that with some new regulatory structures. If the Fed is going to be a lender of last resort to investment banks, then it is, I think, legitimate to make sure that those banks are subject to some sort of requirements, both in terms of liquidity and capital, to assure that we're not seeing excessive risks taken so that they get all the upside and the Fed gets all the downside. So that would be, I think, a second important step.

And then the third thing that I think is important for us to do is to understand that the economy long term has been out of balance for quite some time, even before this current crisis. I mean, we had high corporate profits, enormous rises in productivity over the last decade but wages and incomes have flatlined. And so you had a lot of concentrated wealth at the top, but ordinary folks were getting hammered with rising gas prices, rising costs of health care, rising costs of college tuition. And so creating a tax code that is more equitable and making sure that we're making investments in things like infrastructure and clean energy that can put us on a more stable long-term competitive footing, I think that has to be part of the package as well.

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