Friday January 23, 02:10 AM
Obama steps up anti-recession offensive
By Jitendra Joshi
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President Barack Obama added an intelligence-style economic briefing to his daily agenda as his new administration promised action to shore up crisis-hit banks and homeowners.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said top economic advisor Lawrence Summers had given the first of the briefings, modeled on the daily intelligence briefing already given to US presidents.
"The president asked that this be added each day to his schedule as the country is in the midst of an economic crisis and an economic emergency," Gibbs told reporters.
Highlighting the severity of the recession inherited by Obama's fledgling administration, government data showed Thursday that US jobless claims hit a 26-year high last week and home building fell to half-century lows in December.
Incoming Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner said a financial stability plan will be finalized in the coming weeks as the Obama administration hustles an 825-billion-dollar spree of stimulus spending through Congress.
Despite criticism of Geithner's failure to pay some past US taxes, the Senate's powerful finance committee voted 18-5 Thursday to endorse his appointment to arguably the most crucial job in Obama's new cabinet.
Democratic Senator Kent Conrad said the tax problems arising from Geithner's 2001-2004 employment at the International Monetary Fund, before he became head of the New York Federal Reserve, were "completely unacceptable."
"In normal times that alone would lead me to oppose his confirmation," he said. "But these are not normal times. I believe we cannot afford further delay in filling this critical position."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he will move rapidly to bring the nomination to a vote by the full chamber, as Obama gets to work on tackling the nation's worst economic problems since the 1930s Great Depression.
"The American people understand that things are likely to get worse before they get better," Gibbs said.
"But I think they can be reasonably assured that he's working hard every day to get the economy moving again as quickly as possible."
The House of Representatives voted 270-155 against releasing the second, 350-billion-dollar half of a financial bailout package called the "Troubled Asset Relief Program," which forms the basis of Geithner's stability plan.
The vote was symbolic as the Senate voted down a measure opposing the TARP funds last week, and action by both houses was required to freeze the money.
But it underscored lawmakers' complaints that distressed banks pocketed the first TARP tranche without reopening frozen credit lines, and Gibbs and Geithner promised far greater transparency in the next disbursement.
Republican leaders were to make their case directly to Obama on Friday, joining top Democratic members of Congress for their first joint session of talks at the White House since the president's historic inauguration Tuesday.
"Our plan offers fast-acting tax relief, not slow-moving and wasteful government spending," House Minority Leader John Boehner said.
Gibbs declined to comment on one idea gaining currency on Capitol Hill, for the Treasury to dramatically broaden the TARP by setting up a clearing house to assume trillions of dollars in sour investments made by US financial firms.
The "bad bank" is just one idea under consideration for the stability package, according to Geither, along with a fresh round of capital injections into banks and new measures to prop up the housing market.
Gibbs said "I don't want to get in front of the recommendations that the economic team might make as it relates to that."
But he stressed Obama "believes that we'll do what is necessary to ensure financial stability, that banks that get capital are lending that capital ... that we address the home foreclosure crisis."
Citigroup (NYSE: C - news) economist Steven Wieting said some kind of financial cleansing will be required to get the world's largest economy back on track.
"Building the conditions that will renew self-sustaining economic expansion will require functioning credit markets for worthy borrowers on reasonable terms," he said in a research note.
"To achieve that, the financial baggage of the past cycle will have to be overcome."
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