Obama: Government to act quickly to resolve economic challenge

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Source: CCTV.com | 11-08-2008 09:50

US President-elect Barack Obama says his country is facing its greatest economic challenge in a lifetime. At his first news conference since being elected, Obama says the government has to act quickly to resolve it.

US President-elect Barack Obama says his country is facing its  greatest economic challenge in a lifetime.

Barack Obama says he will immediately confront the economic crisis head-on by taking all necessary steps to ease the credit crisis, help hardworking families, and restore growth and prosperity.

But in the coming weeks, Obama says he will defer to President George W. Bush and his economic team, noting the country has only one government and one president at a time.

Obama says his transition team will monitor developments in the reeling economy closely.

US President-elect Barack Obama said, "We will review the implementation of this administration's financial programme to ensure that the government's efforts are achieving their central goal of stabilizing financial markets while protecting taxpayers, helping homeowners, and not unduly rewarding the management of financial firms that are receiving government assistance. Finally, as we monitor and address these immediate economic challenges, we will be moving forward in laying out a set of policies that will grow our middle class and strengthen our economy in the long term."

Obama's transition to power and early days in office -- if not the entire first year of his presidency -- will almost certainly be devoted to finding remedies for the dismal economic conditions.

More evidence of a recession came on Friday when the government reported the unemployment rate had jumped from 6.1 percent in September to 6.5 percent in October.

Editor:Zhang Ning