I do love the Waldorf-Astoria, though. You know, I hear that from the doorstep you can see all the way to the Russian tea room.

Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach.

It's also wonderful to be back with my great friend and ally, Chancellor [Angela] Merkel. As I reflect back over the last eight years, I could not ask for a steadier or more reliable partner on the world stage, often through some very challenging times.

I'll be honest, there have been times when I've listened to the rhetoric in Europe where an easy equivalent somehow between the United States and Russia and between how our governments operate versus other governments operate, where those distinctions aren't made.

If poverty is a disease that infects the entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can't just treat those symptoms in isolation . We have to heal that entire community.

The Balkanization of the media means that nobody is having a single conversation with a single set of agreed-upon facts and assumptions the way you had as recently as the 90s.

A nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.