MR. GREGORY:
Let's talk
about the broader
economy
and really some encouraging news. This was
The Wall Street Journal
headline this week, "Dow Breaks Through 11,000. Stocks
Rise
on
Outlook
for the
Economy
,
Corporate Earnings
;
Individuals Still
on guidelines." You're out there talking to people; you see so much. What gives you a reason to be optimistic right now?
SEC'Y GEITHNER:
Well, again, you're seeing in the numbers, and if you talk to businesses across the
country
in all industries, you see much more confidence today. The
economy
's growing. It's the
private sector
that's growing, private investment is increasing, exports are stronger.
Americans
are spending a bit more of their income. These are very encouraging signs, and I think they should -- they allow us to be much more
confident
today that we're going to come out of this stronger. But, you know, we have to deal in reality too. And the reality
still
is that this
crisis
caused a huge amount of damage. It's going to take a long
time to heal
that damage.
Americans
are
still
facing enormous pressure, enormous
financial
challenge. And we're going to keep working to make sure we're healing what was broken, reinforce this
recovery
; and we got some
work to do
still
.
MR. GREGORY:
So -- and that headline refers to individuals
still
on the sidelines. You have 8.5
million
jobs lost in the
course
of the recession. In
March
, and something that the, the Fed chairman was concerned about, 44 percent of those unemployed in
March
have been unemployed for six months or more. Is this a
jobless recovery
?
SEC'Y GEITHNER:
I think the
economy
's just starting to create jobs again. That's going to continue. Just remember, a year ago the
economy
lost three quarters of a
million
jobs in one month of
March
. And last month the
economy
created 160,000 new jobs, and I think we're now on a path where you're going to see sustained
job creation
. You're going to see the work week extended, people add hours to their payroll, incomes start to rise again, more people come back to work. And, again, we have more
work to do
, though, to help reinforce that process.
MR. GREGORY:
You don't see the
unemployment rate
climbing again to, say, over 10?
SEC'Y GEITHNER:
No, I'm not an economist,
David
, but if you see that happen it'll be because you have more people come back into the
work force
now because there's hope again. But, again, I think that we're in a much stronger position than -- now today than we were three months ago, six months ago, stronger than we thought, faster
recovery
than many people expected because of the actions the president took.
MR. GREGORY:
And yet you said recently, you told
Matt Lauer
on the "Today" show recently that the
unemployment rate
will be unacceptably high for a long
period of time
. These are the
administration
's projections -- we'll put them up on the screen -- for unemployment, all the way out to the fourth quarter of
2012
at 7.9 percent, which is
still
pretty high. I assume you'd think that would be unacceptably high. So what would incentivize companies to build a new factory now or to look
ahead
and start adding workers to
change
and improve upon that outlook?
SEC'Y GEITHNER:
We're going to work to improve on those numbers.
That's what
we're working hard to do. And we're trying to get
Congress
to move to put in
place
a series of new
tax incentives
for hiring, for business investment. We're trying to work to make sure you can --
states
can keep teachers in the classroom, that we're working to fix schools, fix our roads and bridges, improve infrastructure. There are a range of things we can do like that that'll help make this
recovery
stronger. And, as we grow again, we see more
job creation
, not less.
“ ”