Postcards
Power Point: Gotta spend
February 6, 2009: 6:27 PM ET"You get the argument, 'Well, this is not a stimulus bill; this is a spending bill.' What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point."
--President Obama, in a feisty address Thursday night at a House Democratic Caucus retreat in Williamsburg, Va. Frustrated by the quibbles of Senate Republicans, Obama called the delay to pass the $800 billion stimulus bill "inexcusable."
Today's bleak jobs report--the worst since December 1974--added to the sense of urgency: 598,000 jobs were slashed, pushing the unemployment rate up to 7.6%. Christina Romer, the chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, put further pressure on the Senate with her warning: "If we fail to act, we are likely to lose millions more jobs and the unemployment rate could reach double digits." --Jessica Shambora
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Fortune senior editor at large Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Marissa Mayer: Ready to Rumble at Yahoo," "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), and "Remodeling Martha" (Martha Stewart). She has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women in Business" package every year since its launch in 1998. Pattie is Executive Director of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business and beyond. She oversees MPW programs that enable women leaders to extend their influence and empower the next generation—such as Fortune MPW Entrepreneurs and the Fortune-U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. Beyond her Fortune duties, she is also developing Live Content across Time Inc. Pattie grew up in Allentown, PA, graduated from the University of Virginia, and started at Fortune in 1984. Her blog, Postcards, is about how power players lead, manage others, and navigate their careers.
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The Fortune/U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership brings rising-star women from countries around the world to the U.S. for three-week mentorships with participants of the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit - among them Ursula Burns of Xerox, Laura Lang of Time Inc., Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, and Tory Burch.
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