Washington - President Barack Obama's top economic adviser
on Friday defended the government's unprecedented interventions in
private markets as necessary to keep the US economy afloat, and said
the administration was only interested in taking 'temporary' control.
Larry Summers, director of the White House National Economic
Council, said the government's private equity stakes in top companies
- including Citigroup, American International Group (AIG) and General
Motors - were designed 'to be as temporary as possible.'
'Our approach is clear. We do not want to be owners,' Summers told
the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. 'We want to be stewards
of structural soundness.'
Obama 'did not run for president to manage banks, insurance
companies or car companies,' Summers said. 'The actions we take ...
will be of necessity, not choice.'
The Obama administration has taken controversial stakes in a
series of major US companies in a bid to stabilize the country's
financial system and head off the country's worst recession since the
Great Depression.
Conservatives have criticized the efforts as an unnecessary
intervention in the workings of private markets. Some left-leaning
economists have in turn argued that Obama should be nationalizing
banks that lie at the heart of the global financial crisis.
Summers said the administration remained committed to free
markets, which have come under fire as Wall Street's near collapse in
October spread to all corners of the globe. But Obama does plan to
increase government regulation to prevent a similar collapse in
future, Summers said.
'Our approaches are directed at protecting and strengthening
rather than replacing the market system,' Summers said.
USA
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