PRESIDENT OBAMA: I’ll start off with Steve Holland of Reuters. Q Thank you, Mr. President. You both face economic troubles. Mr. President, how worried are you about the threat of a double-dip recession? What specific policies are you considering to help head it off? And abroad, do you expect Germany to fund another bailout for Greece?
And Chancellor Merkel, is Europe concerned about the possibility of the U.S. defaulting on its debt? Thank you.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I’m not concerned about a double-dip recession. I am concerned about the fact that the recovery that we’re on is not producing jobs as quickly as I want it to happen.
Prior to this month we had seen three months of very robust job growth in the private sector. And so we were very encouraged by that. This month you still saw job growth in the private sector, but it had slowed down. We don’t yet know whether this is a one-month episode or a longer trend.
Obviously we’re experiencing some headwinds, gas prices probably being most prominent. It has an enormous impact on family budgets and on the psychology of consumers. And so we are taking a range of steps to make sure that we’ve got an energy policy that can bring some stability to world oil prices.
But the overall trend that we’ve seen over the last 15 months -- 2 million -- over 2 million jobs created over the past 15 months -- a rebounding of the manufacturing sector in the United States that’s exemplified by the recovery of the Big Three automakers here -- all indicates that we have set a path that will lead us to long-term economic growth.
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