President Barack Obama’s top economic advisers split Sunday on the state of the economy, with one declaring the recession over and the other saying it would not be over until the nation’s unemployment percentage returned to pre-recession levels.
“Today, everybody agrees that the recession is over, and the question is what the pace of the expansion is going to be,” Senior White House Economic Adviser Lawrence Summers said on ABC’s “This Week.”
But Christina Romer, chairwoman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, sounded more cautious, setting a benchmark for the end of the recession as being in a more “normal” range of about 5 percent.
“Well, I’m not going to say the recession is over until the unemployment rate is down to normal levels,” Ms. Romer said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Job losses slowed in November, but picked back up this month, leading some economists to couch the turnaround of the recession as a jobless recovery.
Tom LoBianco has covered energy and environmental policy, including the climate change bill making its way through Congress. From 2007 to 2008, he covered Maryland politics from the Times’s Annapolis bureau. Tom hold’s a master’s degree in political science from Northeastern University and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park. He spent two and a ...
By David Keene
Targeting Romney donors is meant to scare away others
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
Charm City Charmers: a not-so-ragtag group of Baltimore area writers lead by Tamar Alexia Fleishman
Tips for American parents interested in raising healthy, competent, and socially-aware children who will never embarrass themselves on reality television.
Hot rod Mom
7 Photos
Capitals beat Rangers, force Game 7
20 Photos
Wuerl honors police at Blue Mass
18 Photos
'Supermoon' glows around the world
12 Photos
