President Obama said Friday he saw "glimmers of hope" in the economy that could signal a bottoming out, but he warned there was a long way to go before it got back on its feet.
After meeting with his top economic advisers at the White House, Obama said there was still "a lot of work to do."
"We're starting to see progress," he said.
Obama said his administration will be taking additional steps in the next few weeks to help improve the business climate.
The White House meeting included Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair, as well as economic advisers Larry Summers and Christina Romer.
The agenda was to discuss the administration's efforts to stabilize the nation's financial sector, unfreeze the credit markets and stimulate the economy. The rising unemployment rate, mortgage refinancing and the health of banks, including "stress tests" the White House is conducting, were also to be part of the discussion. The high-level meeting follows the president's attendance at the G-20 summit last week in London.
Summers, the director of the president's National Economic Council, said Thursday there were some signs the economy might be pulling out of its free fall. He would not predict how strong any rebound might be or how bad unemployment could get before a turnaround.
"There has been a substantial anecdotal flow over the last six to eight weeks of things that felt a little bit better," Summers said in a speech to the Economic Club of Washington.
A strong profit forecast from Wells Fargo & Co., a drop in unemployment benefit filings and predictions of solid April sales from several retailers were among the bright spots in recent days amid an otherwise bleak economic picture.
The government reported last week that the unemployment rate surged to a 25-year high of 8.5 percent in March. That followed a fourth quarter when the gross domestic product plunged at an annual rate of 6.3 percent, the biggest drop since 1982.
From NPR staff and wire reports
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