44, Day 53: Be Confident. That's an Order!

An ongoing log of the daily activities of the 44th president of the United States during his first 100 days:

-Here's one way to fix the recession: confidence. Larry Summers, President Obama's top economic adviser, said today that while the nation's overly optimistic nature may have pushed us into a recession, it's pessimism is keeping us there longer. So buck up people, or it's going to stay lousy. "It is this transition from an excess of greed to an excess of fear that President Roosevelt had in mind when he famously observed that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself," Summers said.

-The president himself offered a similar message after he met with Paul Volcker, another adviser and a former chairman of the Federal Reserve. "If we are keeping focused on all the fundamentally sound aspects of our economy, all the outstanding companies, workers, all the innovation and dynamism in this economy, then we are going to get through this. And I am very confident about that," Obama said.

-Amtrak, the nation's perpetually struggling passenger rail system, should be very thankful that the new vice president, Joe Biden, rode the train just about every day from his home in Delaware to his Senate office in Washington back when he was but a senator. Today, Biden announced that Amtrak would be getting $1.3 billion in stimulus help.

-Every new administration brings its own vocabulary with them, or it changes the language used by its predecessor. Today, the Obama team stopped using the term "enemy combatant" to describe those suspected terrorists or wannabe terrorists being held at the Guantanamo Bay military facility.

-Personnel watch: Yesterday, we told you how FBI agents has searched the office of the president's choice to be the government's Chief Information Officer. Today, we found out that Vivek Kundra is on a leave of absence.

by J. Jennings Moss

Sources: The Washington Post, ABCNews.com, Voice of America, FoxNews.com, and ComputerWorld.