Obama still confident in U.S. economy

BEIJING, Aug. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- US President Barack Obama, has made his first national speech after its credit rating was downgraded by Standard and Poor's. He said he hopes the downgrade will give lawmakers a new sense of urgency to tackle the country's deficit spending. Despite the rating downgrade, Obama said he is still very confident that the US economy will be put on the right track.

President Barack Obama played down the first-ever downgrade of the US' credit rating, expressing his confidence in the American economy.

He said, "On Friday, we learned that the United States received a downgrade by one of the credit rating agencies, not so much because they doubt our ability to pay our debt if we make good decisions, but because after witnessing a month of wrangling over raising the debt ceiling, they doubted our political system's ability to act. The markets on the other hand continue to believe our credit status is triple A."

And Obama reassured investors and the public that the nation's leaders need to show more "common sense and compromise" to tame a staggering accumulation of debt.

He said, "But here is the good news, our problems our imminently solvable and we know what we have to do to solve them. With respect to debt, our problem is not confidence in our credit, the markets continue to reaffirm our credit as among the world's safest. Our challenge is the need to tackle our deficits over the long-term."

Standard and Poor's was dissatisfied with the deal lawmakers reached last week just in time to prevent a debt default by the US government.

But Obama said most of the world's investors agree that the United States remains a wise place to put their money.

Obama said, "There will always be economic factors that we can't control. Earthquakes, spikes in oil prices, slowdowns in other parts of the world. But how we respond to those tests, that's an entirely up to us. Markets will rise and fall but this is the United States of America. No matter what some agency may say, we've always been and always will be a triple A country."

Still, stocks sank in trading on Monday as US investors joined a global sell-off after the downgrade.