Obama touts economic progress at press grilling

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 9:31 PM Posted by Beijing News


US President Barack Obama has told his crisis-weary nation he sees signs of economic progress but pleaded for "patience" as he battles to overcome the worst financial maelstrom in decades.

At a prime-time news conference, Obama also vowed to stay focussed on enormous foreign policy challenges despite the crisis at hand, arguing that Middle East peace was not getting easier but remained as vital as ever.

The president said his government, in its first two hectic months in office, had framed a strategy to attack the economic crisis on "all fronts" and touted his 3.6-trillion-dollar budget as the key to recovery.

"It's a strategy to create jobs, to help responsible homeowners, to restart lending, and to grow our economy over the long term. And we are beginning to see signs of progress.

"We'll recover from this recession, but it will take time, it will take patience," Obama said, at the climax of an intense week of economic and foreign policy rollouts ahead of his first big trip abroad next week.

The president said his budget, which opposition Republicans argue will run up huge deficits for years, would create clean energy jobs, promote a highly skilled workforce and make health care affordable.

"That's why this budget is inseparable from this recovery -- because it is what lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity."

But John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, said Obama had "resorted to outright distortion" in selling his budget plan, insisting it was "flat-out untrue" of the president to claim Republicans were offering no proposals of their own.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, fresh from outlining long-awaited details of a banking rescue, meanwhile asked Congress Tuesday for unprecedented powers to seize non-bank financial firms if needed to maintain stability.

Obama anticipated "strong support from the American people and from Congress to provide that authority" so that a non-banking company such as giant insurer American International Group cannot hold the entire economy hostage.

Obama next week takes his first big steps on the world stage at the Group of 20 summit in London on April 2 -- when he will have his first encounters with Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Everyone at the G20 would have to do more to shoulder their burden of growth, through stimulus measures, regulatory reform and resisting protectionist pressure in trade, Obama said.

"We don't want a situation in which some countries are making extraordinary efforts and other countries aren't, with the hope that countries that are making those important steps lift everybody up," he said.

But rejecting a proposal floated by China's central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, Obama said "I don't believe there is a need for a global currency" to supplant the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

The greenback, he insisted, was "extraordinarily strong" as investors consider the United States to be "the strongest economy in the world with the most stable political system."

After the G20, Obama will go to a NATO summit on the France-German border on April 3 and 4, visit the Czech Republic and then go to Turkey in his first visit to a Muslim nation as president.

The United States prescribes economic stimulus plans and more financial regulation to respond to the worst global economic slump in generations.

Obama added that he expected "steady progress" resolving disputes with Iran after he made an unprecedented video appeal to the Islamic republic.





Bleier

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