Obama sees US economy moving from recession to recovery

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama Tuesday said efforts to take the economy from ‘recession to recovery’ are ’starting to work’, although there was more work to be done to restore growth.

The steps taken to re-capitalise banks, strengthen the housing market and rescue the auto sector were ‘necessary pieces of the recovery puzzle’, he said in an address at Georgetown University in Washington.

‘They have been designed to increase aggregate demand, get credit flowing again to families and businesses, and help them ride out the storm. And taken together, these actions are starting to generate signs of economic progress,’ he said.

Obama outlined the steps his administration is taking to confront the economic crisis and the work that still needs to be done to get the economy back on track a day after declaring that his stimulus plan is ’starting to work’ and that transportation projects are coming in ahead of schedule and under budget.

Obama signed into law his $787 billion economic stimulus plan in mid-February, calling it the ‘beginning of the end’ of the country’s economic woes.

Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke also said Tuesday that he sees ‘tentative signs’ that the economic decline is easing.

‘A levelling out of economic activity is the first step toward recovery. To be sure, we will not have a sustainable recovery without a stabilisation of our financial system and credit markets,’ Bernanke said in a speech at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.

‘I am fundamentally optimistic about our economy,’ he said. ‘Today’s economic conditions are difficult, but the foundations of our economy are strong, and we face no problems that cannot be overcome with insight, patience and persistence.’

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Tuesday suggested 58 percent or nearly six in 10 Americans think Obama has a clear plan to get the economy back on track.

That figure is more than double the 24 percent who think that Republicans in Congress have a clear plan on the economy. Nearly three in four polled said the Republican party doesn’t have a clear economic plan.