Obama pledges to halve defecit
- 00:01:59
- ITN
Obama pledges to halve defecit
US President Barack Obama has warned there are no quick fixes to the financial crisis but said his budget would halve the US deficit by the end of his first term. Mr Obama moved to reassure Americans that his administration has a strategy in place to "attack this crisis on all fronts." He said: "We'll recover from this recession, but it will take time, it will take patience, and it will take an understanding that, when we all work together, when each of us looks beyond our own short-term interest to the wider set of obligations we have towards each other, that's when we succeed, that's when we prosper, and that's what is needed right now." Mr Obama is preparing for a European trip next week that includes the G20 summit on the global economic crisis. His proposal to restart the US financial system sent stocks surging around the globe on Monday, though they slipped back again the following day. The rescue plan seeks to melt a vast credit freeze by helping banks shed bad loans. Under the proposal, the government will finance the purchase by private investors of as much as $1 trillion of the $2 trillion in bad assets still held by the US banks. In an attempt to prevent future crises, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged Congress for new powers to regulate non-bank financial companies like AIG. Mr Obama endorsed the request and added: "It is precisely because of the lack of this authority that AIG's problems threatened to bring down the entire US economy."
ITN | March 25, 2009
