All right, I’ve got time for one more question.  I’m going to call on this young lady right here.

Q    I’m really nervous.  Thank you, Mr. President, for being here.  There’s a lot of people sending you a lot of good energy, one being my 82-year-old aunt.  She wanted me to make sure I told you that.

THE PRESIDENT:  Tell her I said hi.

Q    Okay.  I’m a massage¹（按摩，揉） therapist and --

THE PRESIDENT:  I’ve got a crick（肌肉抽筋） in my neck right here.  (Laughter.)

Q    Yes, I bet you do.

THE PRESIDENT:  A lot of tension has been building up.  (Laughter.)

Q    Do you get a regular massage?  (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead, go ahead.

Q    One prevailing² theme that comes here in my practice is fear.  And on an energetic level, what I would like to see you institute or get started, bipartisan, is to alleviate³（减轻，缓和） people’s fears of spending $5.  I know this is like -- it sounds so basic. But if we go out there and spend a little bit, it’s going to come back around.  It works.  I mean, you’ve got a program here where you’ve got -- you’re giving a tax break to those companies that hire returning vets⁴.

THE PRESIDENT:  Right.

Q    You have a $2,400 tax break.

THE PRESIDENT:  Right.

Q    Well, who are those companies?  I would patronize（惠顾，资助） a company that’s making the effort of going out and hiring these people.  I mean, you’ve got to spend it to get it back.  And there’s just this prevailing fear all the time and it doesn’t have -- it comes down to $5, $10, whatever, you got to put it out there and it will start the momentum⁵ going.

Q    It would also be some good news.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, look, I think you are absolutely right that some of this is psychology⁶（心理学） .  Look, the country went through a huge trauma（创伤，外伤） .  The body politic⁸ is like an individual in the sense that if they go through a really bad accident and you’re in a cast and got a little whiplashed（鞭绳，鞭打） and bruised⁹ and battered¹⁰, it takes some time to recover.  And that’s what happened to our economy.  We went through a really bad accident.

It was a preventable one, by the way.  If we had had some more rules of the road in place, if we’d had better economic policies, we could have prevented it.  But it is what it is.  We went through this.

You’re absolutely right, though, that now part of what’s holding us back is us needing to go ahead and feel confident about the future.  Now, that’s not the only thing holding us back.  Let’s be realistic.  Part of the reason people aren’t spending is they had maxed out on their credit cards, and people, quite sensibly, said to themselves, you know what, this is probably a good time for us to reflect on the fact that we were buying a bunch of stuff that maybe we should get in the future but we weren’t quite there yet and we should run down our debts. And people have done that.  People have been paying down their debts a lot more over the last year than they had in the previous five or 10 years.

A lot of people were borrowing against their homes -- home equity¹¹ loans.  One of the things that I always -- Michelle and I always laugh about is when people talk about us, I think they forget that we were basically living the same lives as John and Nicole, just -- it wasn’t that long ago.  It was like six, seven years ago.  I still remember the first time I refinanced our -- we had a condo, and we had gotten higher -- initially¹², we had gotten higher rates.  And then -- because we bought it in 1993. And sometime around ’97 or ’98 -- I don’t remember exactly when  -- the rates had gone down like a couple of percent.  And we said, well, it makes sense for us to go to refinance.

And I still remember talking to the bank.  And they said, you can refinance and you can take some money out.  And I said, well, what does that mean?  They said, well, your house -- your condo has appreciated so much that you can take -- it’s like found money.

And I remember thinking at the time, well that doesn’t sound right.  (Laughter.)  But it was -- but that was -- everybody, I think, was so certain that homes were appreciating, and they would always appreciate, and so it just made everybody feel a lot richer.

Now, homes suddenly start dropping in value.  You don't have that kind of equity（公平，公正） .  And so people feel a little bit less wealthy; 401(k)s still haven’t fully¹³ recovered; 529s, the college portfolios¹⁴ that people put together, they still haven’t fully recovered.  So there are legitimate¹⁵ and real reasons why people have pulled back a little bit.

But having said all that, I want to end on the point that you’re making, which is that we have averted¹⁶ the worst.  The economy is now growing.  There are enormous opportunities out there.  There are people who are inventing stuff that will be the new products of the future all across this country.  There are young people who, when I meet them, they are talented and they’re energetic, and they feel confident about America.

If you travel overseas, as tough as this recession has been for us, the truth of the matter is, is that most countries still envy the United States.  And there are billions of people around the world who would die to be here and have that opportunity to prosper¹⁷ and be part of this great middle class of ours.

And so my hope is -- and this goes to the question of the previous gentleman -- what can Republicans and Democrats¹⁸ do together after this election is stop spending so much time attacking the other side, and spend a little more time focusing on what’s good and what’s right about America, and what opportunities we have.  (Applause.)  And if we do that, then I’m absolutely confident that we’re going to move forward for a long time to come.

Thank you very much, everybody.  God bless you.  (Applause.)