WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. government should give more support to help underwater homeowners in a bid to shore up the property sector and economic growth, former U.S. President Bill Clinton said here Friday.
It is difficult for U.S. economy to pick up steam without helping distressed homeowners to deleverage faster, Clinton said at a symposium titled Clinton-Gore Economics: Understanding the Lessons of the 1990s at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Experts held that the slow household deleveraging and the falling home values posed a drag on the broad U.S. economic recovery.
The Obama administration was taking a list of moves to boost the economy including helping more distressed homeowners refinance their loans.
The U.S. housing market was still anemic with average home price more than 30 percent lower from its peak level in 2006, as a combination of weak consumer confidence and tight lending criteria held back potential home buyers.
Clinton touched on a series of topics ranging from unemployment, federal government's fiscal deficits to innovation.
He stressed the importance of putting the U.S. fiscal house in order, adding that a bipartisan debt reduction deal proposed by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform last year was a sound plan.
In February 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama created the commission, dubbed as Bowles-Simpson commission after the two co- chairs' names, to find ways to improve the longer-term U.S. fiscal outlook. Erskine Bowles, former President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff, was chosen to serve as a co-chairman with former Republican senator Alan Simpson.
The commission recommended a massive spending cut plan to trim U.S. fiscal deficits by 4 trillion U.S. dollars over the next decade. But this plan failed to get enough support from the 18- member commission to clear the path for a Congress debate partly due to fierce partisan wrangling on fiscal and other economic fronts.
Clinton said that the United States should endeavor to reduce the painfully high unemployment rate currently at 9.1 percent, adding that high unemployment was not only an economic issue, but had other negative social repercussions.
He noted a vibrant mixture of government and private sector was critical to any successful nation, adding that the world's largest economy needed shared prosperity and shared responsibility.