New Delhi: With the Barack Obama administration working overtime to tackle the financial crisis, is the United States’ economy showing incipient signs of a turnaround?
Wednesday’s economic data bore evidence of that to some small measure.
New-home sales rose 4.7 pc to a 337,000 annual rate in February, much higher than expected. Durable-goods orders jumped 3.4 pc to USD 165.6 billion in February. This is an unexpected move after six straight months of decline. US markets rose too on the news.
In an exclusive interview to CNBC, Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, said pace of deterioration was slowing down to an extent.
“We have seen a lot of adjustment across the US economy and the global economy,” Geithner said.
“You are seeing the pace of deterioration start to slow in some areas. And I think that is promising but this is going to take sometime to work through.”
China playing major role
China, the Treasury Secretary said, is playing an important stabilising role in the financial crisis.
“The thing that they are doing to get their economy stronger, to encourage domestic demand growth, to allow further revolution in their basis financial basic framework, those things are very important consequential qualities and we are working very closely with them,” he said. “I think they have a lot of confidence in the policies we are pursuing.”
'Will bring down deficit'
The idea of the Treasury Secretary, and the US administration, is that the best way to secure the value of the dollar is for the government to spend heavily now but stick to policies in the coming years that they say will bring down the deficit.
“I want to say this with emphasis very clearly, a strong dollar is to America’s interest. We are going to make sure we are pursuing policies that will improve the long-term fundamentals of the US economy and you saw that the President’s budget, a very clear commitment that once we get through with this recession we are going to bring our resources and commitment more into balance.”
Will provide investor protection but won't commit
Geithner, however, did not commit any about giving investor protection for those who participated in the toxic asset plan but added they will need protection and the administration will assure them, and he called on investors to take risk, at the same time. “That is what is going to take to turn around the economy.”
Comments
0 comment