Obama predicts renewed US growth in fourth quarter

WASHINGTON : President Barack Obama predicted the United States economy would grow again in the final quarter of 2009, pulling further out of a long and crippling recession.

"We have seen economic growth. We anticipate economic growth next quarter as well," Obama said in an interview with Fox News from China.

In percentage terms, the US economy grew at a seasonally adjusted 3.5 percent annual rate in the third quarter from the previous quarter.

The growth exceeded analysts expectations and marked the strongest quarter since the third quarter of 2007 when a US subprime mortgage crisis triggered a global financial meltdown.

Obama acknowledged that while the US economy was improving it would still take time to get a grip on soaring unemployment, which passed the symbolic 10 percent mark for the first time in 26 years last month.

"I always said that job growth would lag behind economic growth," he said.

"Nobody has been more disappointed than I have to see how high the unemployment rate has gotten, and I spend every waking hour when I'm talking to my economic team about how, where are you going to put people back to work."

Last Thursday, hours before embarking on his first trip to Asia as president, Obama announced a jobs forum would be held at the White House in December to try and tackle the crisis.

"This is an inexact science," Obama said of job creation, noting that the huge US economy was hit by its worst crisis since 1933, the depth of the Great Depression.

"The first measure of success of economic recovery is did we pull ourselves back from the brink? Have we gotten economic growth going again? We have.

"The question now is, can we make sure that we're accelerating job growth? That's my number one job," Obama said.

Since coming to office Obama has struggled to balance moves to spur job growth -- principally through a massive 787-billion-dollar stimulus package -- with the need to curb the runaway US deficit.

On Wednesday he said that one way of boosting jobs while not pushing the deficit up further would be to increase exports to places such as China.

"Export promotion would be something we could do without spending money," he said, hinting at moves to cut taxes for firms that take on new employees.

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said this week that he expects the US economy to sustain its growth into 2010 despite "important headwinds," including tight credit and weak employment.

Bernanke said he sees the economy maintaining growth -- after expanding in the third quarter following four quarters of declines -- despite fears of a so-called double-dip recession.

The weak job market is an area "of great concern," the Fed Chairman said in remarks to the Economic Club of New York, adding that the "best thing we can say about the labor market right now is that it may be getting worse more slowly."