Biden: Obama misread crisis
JOSEPH Biden, the US Vice President, has admitted President Barack Obama’s administration underestimated the scale of the recession and failed to foresee unemployment levels nearing double digits.
He said the Obama team “misread how bad the economy was”, and admitted the unemployment figure of 9.5 per cent released last week was “much too high”.
“There was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited,” he said in an interview with ABC News, which aired yesterday.
He insisted the administration has taken the right approach to guiding the world’s largest economy out of recession, adding Obama’s $787bn (£482bn) economic stimulus was “the right package”. But it will take more time for the stimulus package to take effect, as many of its investment programmes to boost the US economy are still not operational, he said.
The programmes will roll out over the next 18 months, he added.
He yesterday refused to rule out Obama having to launch another stimulus package to salvage the economy, saying it is “premature to make that judgment”.
Criticism has been mounting of Obama’s stimulus, with experts suggesting it should have been positioned more towards cutting taxes to allow businesses to recover, rather than towards government spending.
Biden’s remarks come after Obama’s central administration has recently hinted of “green shoots” of an economic recovery.
The Vice President launched his own bid to become President before accepting the Vice Presidency from Obama, but failed to attract the spotlight amid competition from Obama and Hillary Clinton.