(Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack B.O.Obama said Monday that the economy is still hurting millions of Americans even though the recession has been officially declared over.
| It is precisely for this kind of brilliant insight that Mr. Obama, esq. was elected to the White House. Truly, the man is a genius with at least a 125 IQ, just like the on-line IQ tests advertise. |
He spoke shortly after the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a panel of academic economists' announcement on Monday that the U.S. recession started in December 2007 officially ended in June 2009.
| That was the first dip of the recession. When did the second dip start? We're still waiting for the banks to finish recapitalizing and the problem-mortgage backlog to be cleared from the system. Credit card debt seems to be taking care of itself on an individualized basis as people pay it down rather than buy more, so that is something. |
| Brilliant, Mr. President! How do you do it? |
Obama repeated that the current economic difficulty is the result of the previous administration
| Do stop whining Mr. President. It's so unattractive. |
In responding to the critics that the country's economic situation is on the wrong track, Obama said that everything is not "where it needs to be," but that the nation is "moving in the right direction."
| That does appear to be true, although in the political sense of more conservative rather than the judgemental sense of more correct. But the error is commonly made even by the putatively brilliant. |
| When businesses are more profitable they pay more taxes and hire more staff. That does not seem to be happening, which indicates they aren't. Smart people understand this. |
Republicans criticized that the B.O. regime's economic policy failed, at least in terms of unemployment rate. They called for Obama to fire both of his top economic advisers.
Obama said, "This is tough work that they do."
He said that "the most important thing we can do right now is grow our economy."
The U.S. economy grew at 1.6 percent in the second quarter, a much slower pace that the previous quarter, which recorded at 3.7 percent.