US President Barack Obama, in the first nationally televised evening news conference of his young presidency, demanded that lawmakers pass an US$800-billion-plus economic recovery plan or risk turning “a crisis into a catastrophe.”
The administration and Congress were both moving on parallel tracks yesterday toward a new round of heavy intervention to pull the US economy out of its recessionary spiral.
The US Treasury Department planned to announce a revamped bank rescue plan, one calling for a stepped-up role by private investors. And an US$838 billion stimulus bill was headed for expected Senate approval after clearing a critical procedural hurdle on Monday.
As part of his campaign to build public support for quick passage of his economic stimulus plan, he took his message to a nationwide audience watching his news conference live during television’s prime evening viewing hours.
In opening remarks, he said the federal government “is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back to life.”
“The plan is not perfect,” he said. “No plan is. I can’t tell you for sure that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hope, but I can tell you with complete confidence that a failure to act will only deepen this crisis as well as the pain felt by millions of Americans.”
The Treasury Department was ready to announce how it will spend the remaining US$350 billion of the US$700 billion financial rescue program started by the Bush administration last fall. The plan envisions big investors buying more than US$1 trillion in troubled assets from the banks, according to congressional staffers briefed on the plan on Monday night by Treasury officials.
Obama depicted his administration’s rewrite of the bank bailout effort as a template for “restoring market confidence.”
“The credit crisis is real, and it’s not over,” he said.
Obama issued a dire warning of the consequences if Congress fails to agree on a stimulus package.
“This is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill recession,” he said.
He cited Japan’s failure to take bold actions in time to reverse a recession that turned the 1990s into a “lost decade” with no economic growth. He said failure to act quickly “could turn a crisis into a catastrophe.”
Obama said the US could well be in better shape by next year, as measured by increased hiring, lending, home values and other factors.
He said bringing politicians of both parties behind the task of saving the economy was “the test facing the United States of America in this winter of our hardship.” But he also said bipartisanship has its limits.
“What I won’t do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place,” he said.
As for the economic stimulus bill in Congress, Democratic Senate leaders were able to rally the votes needed to clear a procedural barrier on Monday to open the way toward final passage yesterday.
PROVOCATIVE: Chinese Deputy Ambassador to the UN Sun Lei accused Japan of sending military vessels to deliberately provoke tensions in the Taiwan Strait China denounced remarks by Japan and the EU about the South China Sea at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, and accused Tokyo of provocative behavior in the Taiwan Strait and planning military expansion. Ayano Kunimitsu, a Japanese vice foreign minister, told the Council meeting on maritime security that Tokyo was seriously concerned about the situation in the East China and South China seas, and reiterated Japan’s opposition to any attempt to change the “status quo” by force, and obstruction of freedom of navigation and overflight. Stavros Lambrinidis, head of the EU delegation to the UN, also highlighted South China Sea
SILENCING CRITICS: In addition to blocking Taiwan, China aimed to prevent rights activists from speaking out against authoritarian states, a Cabinet department said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned transnational repression by Beijing after RightsCon, a major digital human rights conference scheduled to be held in Zambia this week, was abruptly canceled due to Chinese pressure over Taiwanese participation. This year’s RightsCon, the world’s largest conference discussing issues “at the intersection of human rights and technology,” was scheduled to take place from tomorrow to Friday in Lusaka, and expected to draw 2,600 in-person attendees from 150 countries, along with 1,100 online participants. However, organizers were forced to cancel the event due to behind-the-scenes pressure from China, the ministry said, expressing its “strongest condemnation”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said it expects its 2-nanometer (2nm) chip capacity to grow at a compound annual rate of 70 percent from this year to 2028. The projection comes as five fabs begin volume production of 2-nanometer chips this year — two in Hsinchu and three in Kaohsiung — TSMC senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer Cliff Hou (侯永清) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Silicon Valley, California, last week. Output in the first year of 2-nanometer production, which began in the fourth quarter of last year, is expected to
Taiwan’s economy grew far faster than expected in the first quarter, as booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications drove a surge in exports, spilling over into investment and consumption, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. GDP growth was 13.69 percent year-on-year during the January-to-March period, beating the DGBAS’ February forecast by 2.23 percentage points and marking the most robust growth in nearly four decades, DGBAS senior official Chiang Hsin-yi (江心怡) told a news conference in Taipei. The result was powered by exports, which remain the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, Chiang said. Outbound shipments jumped 51.12 percent year-on-year to
RSS