European situation threat to US economic recovery: Obama
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E-mail Xinhua, June 9, 2012
The simmering eurozone debt crisis posed a big threat to the U.S. economic recovery, with the region facing the risk of a renewed recession, U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday.
European leaders should take further action to bolster the weak banking sector and soothe market jitters, Obama said at a White House press conference.
U.S. lawmakers should pass the full American Jobs Act presented by the administration to Congress last September to spur job creation in the United States and guard against economic slowdown risks in other parts of the world, Obama said.
The hastily arranged press conference came after a weak job report and a string of other economic data showing U.S. economic growth was slowing and the impacts of the escalating eurozone debt crisis had reached U.S. shores, putting pressure on U.S. policy markers to take action.
Obama reiterated his confidence in European leaders' capacity to contain the two-year-old crisis, saying that "the decisions required are tough, but Europe has the capacity to make them".
The U.S. president stressed the importance of fiscal stimulus measures to shore up anemic economic growth on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, noting that the short-term challenges for the United States were to speed up job creation and economic recovery.
Over the longer term, even as European countries with large debt burdens carry out necessary fiscal reforms, they still need to promote economic growth and job creation, he noted.
"As some countries have discovered, it's a lot harder to rein in deficits and debts if your economy isn't growing," Obama added.
The U.S. jobless rate edged up to 8.2 percent in May from 8.1 percent in the previous month, while Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke predicted on Thursday that the world's largest economy could only grow at a "moderate pace" over coming quarters before the presidential and congressional election in November.
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