6 million jobs through its first stimulus plan

Americans have always been more realistic than the Europeans on the merits of Barack Obama. They elected him to the country out of recession, pas to wear praised or throw it to the nettle after ten months of power. Despite struggling for critics to condemn its "tendency to procrastination", it is revealed that he was rather well forth between pitfalls. He even found the year pulling the green light for the reform of the Health Bill Clinton was denied in 1993 in the Senate. Obama the "irrésolu", Obama the champion of the compromise, "the economist" painted in undecided Hamlet ("too surge or not to surge") on the Afghanistan, has been more determined than expected. This does not mean that it necessarily holds the keys of the US recovery, the impact will be crucial on November 2010 mid-term elections.

"Some say that we must choose between reducing our deficit and invest in job creation and growth." But it is a false alternative: the growth and job creation are the best ways to ensure the reduction of deficits! ", recently declared Barack Obama in his speech on employment at the Brookings Institution. It is on this Keynesian stimulus creed, with of fiscal prudence, that he based all his hopes for upturn in the first half of 2010. But on the three keys of the US recovery: employment, consumer and credit, the prognosis is still uncertain. Unemployment has already registered a slight unexpected decline in November (from 10.2 to 10), but must await the publication of the next clues Friday to find out whether this was a simple "blip" cyclical or inversion of curve, many economists providing no real recession for before the fall of 2010. Same uncertainties on the front of consumption (70 of GDP) where US households still have difficulty to their accounts with the 5,000 billions of dollars of destruction of wealth in 2008. The recent downward revision in the rate of growth in the third quarter (from 3.5 to 2.2) shows that the probability of a soft recovery remain relatively high. The stabilization of the banking sector, despite the willingness of the large "too big to fail" institutions to repay State aid to free itself from the tutelage of the Treasury, remained precarious, especially under the credit.

Despite these results mixed and these heavy uncertainties, many economists estimate that growth prospects are better in the United States than in Europe or the Japan. Apart from the warnings of the Nobel in economics Joseph Stiglitz on the need for a "relaunching bis" or Martin Feldstein (Harvard) on the weaknesses of consumption, most experts tend to now exclude the risk of a real relapse ("double dip") in the second half of 2010. The consensus is a prediction of growth of us GDP from 2.5 to 3.5 this year (against a decline of 0.4 to 0.1 in 2009). "My prognosis is that there will be a modest economic growth in 2010, sufficient to reduce the rate of unemployment, but at a slower pace that we would like," cautiously said the pattern of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, in mid-December. Not what offset more than 7 million American jobs destroyed since the beginning of the recession. In fact, the real threat yet to the out of the crisis is the spectre of a jobless ("jobless recovery"). Certainly, Obama administration prides itself of having already "saved" some 1.6 million jobs through its first stimulus plan. It also put the development of clean energy to boost industrial investment and restoring America's leadership in advanced technologies. But it is a bet in the long term. And the meagre results of the employment summit organized, early December, Washington, which is essentially concluded by a range of technical measures for SMEs, show the limits of the Keynesian credo of the White House. Prisoner of his moderation, Barack Obama have been too timid on stimulus, as the he criticized sometimes the Nobel Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman Some critics are starting to emerge on the "lack of breath" of his team, often considered too gained on Wall Street, and the lack of consistency and clarity of his "message" on the economy.

Recovery, restructuring of the automobile industry and health reform: Barack Obama has in any case more accomplished in 10 months that many of his predecessors in one or two terms. It is not the first President of the United States to be fallen below 50 of popularity within ten months. Before him, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have experienced the same fate before bounce at the end of mandate. But it is no doubt one of the first to see his political future largely linked to the return to employment.