WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and his top economic adviser spoke confidently of an economic turnaround Friday and even pointed to early signs. But the president still cautioned, “We’ve got to get through this difficult period.”
The nation is still burdened by “an excess of fear,” said the director of Obama’s National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers. He said consumers’ spending seems to have stabilized in an encouraging sign, but he also suggested it was too early to predict the timing of a broader recovery for the millions of Americans who Obama acknowledged were suffering.
If too much financial greed helped cause the recession, Summers said, fear is helping to keep it going.
“It is this transition from an excess of greed to an excess of fear that President Roosevelt had in mind when he famously observed that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself,” Summers said.
Obama, speaking with reporters at the White House, said that the days of overheated housing markets and maxed-out credit cards are over. “We are laying a foundation for what I’m calling a post-bubble economic growth” that won’t repeat the risks that led to the current crisis, he said.
“There are a lot of individual families who are experiencing incredible pain and hardship right now,” Obama said. “But we’re providing help along the way.”
He mentioned several economic recovery measures for home owners and other individuals and promised he would soon announce “additional steps to help small businesses.”
