Obama expresses confidence in Europe

Associated Press

CANNES, France

Conceding a fragile global recovery and plodding job growth back home, President Barack Obama said Friday he is confident European leaders are fixing their ominous debt crisis that threatens to undermine the United States and his own shot at a second term.

A year shy of the election, Obama said the American economy is growing, but “way too slow.”

The president capped his role at a brisk G-20 summit essentially where he started it, offering solidarity to his European peers with none-too-subtle signals it was their responsibility to clean up the economic mess in their own backyards.

At issue is an evolving rescue package across the 17 nations sharing the euro as their common currency. The plan could prevent a default in Greece, put up a financial firewall against future trouble and reassure markets about the credibility of the euro.

“I am confident that Europe has the capacity to meet this challenge,” Obama said in a news conference at the meeting of leading industrialized and developing countries.

“I know it isn’t easy, but what is absolutely critical — and what the world looks for in moments such as this — is action,” he said. “That’s how we confronted our financial crisis in the United States.”

The drama of Greek’s messy internal struggles and their potential to derail the entire European effort hung over the summit in this French Riviera resort, as did a gloomy rain.

While Obama met with world leaders, a new jobs report showed the American economy added 80,000 jobs in October, and that the job expansion in the previous two months was better than first thought.