Cut costs to face India, China challenge: Obama
The Financial Express, March 26, 2009, Page 11
WashingtonFaced with over $1 trillion fiscal deficit, US President Barack Obama has said Americans need to reduce expenditure and cut costs, or else India and China will outperform them.
Pointing out that there are no easy solutions for the recession-hit US economy, Obama said at a White House press conference yesterday, “It will take many months and many different solutions to lead us out (of recession)... There are no quick fixes and there are no silver bullets”.
Obama said his administration inherited a whopping fiscal deficit of $1.3 trillion from his predecessor. While it would take a long time to fix the structural deficit, US must bend the curve on these wide fiscal gaps, he added.
Otherwise, Obama warned, “... we will allow China or India or other countries to lap our young people in terms of their performance. We will settle on lower growth rates, and we will continue to contract both as an economy and our ability to provide a better life for our kids”.
On China’s concern over the value of the US dollar as a global currency, he said, “the dollar is extra-ordinarily strong right now... because investors consider the United States the strongest economy in the world, with the most stable political system in the world.
“I don’t believe that there is a need for global currency”. Referring to the bonus payments at the beleaguered insurer AIG, Obama said, “I’m as angry as anybody about those bonuses that went to some of the very same individuals who brought our financial system to its knees, partly because it’s yet another symptom of the culture that led us to this point”.The US President said strict conditions are in place for companies receiving taxpayers’ money, when it comes to executive pay and dividend payment, among others.
“Moving forward, anybody — any bank, for example, that is receiving capital from the taxpayers is going to have some very strict conditions in terms of how it pays out its executives, how it pays out dividend, how it’s reporting its lending practices,” he noted.
Assuring Americans that the economy would recover from the recession, Obama, however, said it would take time. “... 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,” he said.
—PTI
The Financial Express, March 26, 2009, Page 11
WashingtonFaced with over $1 trillion fiscal deficit, US President Barack Obama has said Americans need to reduce expenditure and cut costs, or else India and China will outperform them.
Pointing out that there are no easy solutions for the recession-hit US economy, Obama said at a White House press conference yesterday, “It will take many months and many different solutions to lead us out (of recession)... There are no quick fixes and there are no silver bullets”.
Obama said his administration inherited a whopping fiscal deficit of $1.3 trillion from his predecessor. While it would take a long time to fix the structural deficit, US must bend the curve on these wide fiscal gaps, he added.
Otherwise, Obama warned, “... we will allow China or India or other countries to lap our young people in terms of their performance. We will settle on lower growth rates, and we will continue to contract both as an economy and our ability to provide a better life for our kids”.
On China’s concern over the value of the US dollar as a global currency, he said, “the dollar is extra-ordinarily strong right now... because investors consider the United States the strongest economy in the world, with the most stable political system in the world.
“I don’t believe that there is a need for global currency”. Referring to the bonus payments at the beleaguered insurer AIG, Obama said, “I’m as angry as anybody about those bonuses that went to some of the very same individuals who brought our financial system to its knees, partly because it’s yet another symptom of the culture that led us to this point”.The US President said strict conditions are in place for companies receiving taxpayers’ money, when it comes to executive pay and dividend payment, among others.
“Moving forward, anybody — any bank, for example, that is receiving capital from the taxpayers is going to have some very strict conditions in terms of how it pays out its executives, how it pays out dividend, how it’s reporting its lending practices,” he noted.
Assuring Americans that the economy would recover from the recession, Obama, however, said it would take time. “... 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,” he said.
—PTI
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