As the dreadful economic news piles up, President Barack Obama challenged the nation Saturday to not just hang in there but rather to see the hard times as a chance to "discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis."
"That is what we can do and must do today. And I am absolutely confident that is what we will do," Obama said in his weekly radio and video address, taped a day earlier at the White House.
The work week ended on another dour note, with the report of 651,000 more American jobs slashed and an unemployment rate climbing to 8.1 percent.
That is the highest rate of people out of work in more than 25 years, as the recession continued to put enormous pressures on families and industries. Obama recapped the work of another hectic week in his young presidency.
His goal was to reassure the country that he and his team are taking specific steps to create jobs in the short term and begin to address huge issues, like health care, that affect virtually everyone.