WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama predicted Wednesday that the United States economy would grow again in the final quarter of 2009, pulling further out of a long and crippling recession.“We have seen economic growth. We anticipate economic growth next quarter as well,” Obama said in an interview with Fox News from China.

In percentage terms, the US economy grew at a seasonally adjusted 3.5 per cent annual rate in the third quarter from the previous quarter.  The growth exceeded analysts expectations and marked the strongest quarter since the third quarter of 2007 when a US subprime mortgage crisis triggered a global financial meltdown.

Obama acknowledged that while the US economy was improving it would still take time to get a grip on soaring unemployment, which passed the symbolic 10 per cent mark for the first time in 26 years last month.

“I always said that job growth would lag behind economic growth,” he said.

“Nobody has been more disappointed than I have to see how high the unemployment rate has gotten, and I spend every waking hour when I’m talking to my economic team about how, where are you going to put people back to work.”

Last Thursday, hours before embarking on his first trip to Asia as president, Obama announced a jobs forum would be held at the White House in December to try and tackle the crisis. —AFP