Contrary to comments made this past weekend by Vice President Joe Biden, President Barack Obama says that the administration did not misread the economic downturn.
“We haven't always gotten the numbers right, but I think the general overview is right,” Obama told NBC News Tuesday. “We went through an economic tsunami that was far worse than anything we have gone through since the Great Depression, and even early on I think we did not see the full magnitude of what was going to happen."
The downturn came about faster than expected, and the information the administration had before it was not complete, Obama said.
“[My administration] came in [on] January 20th. It was only after the first-quarter numbers came in, if you recall, that suddenly everybody looked and said the economy shrank six percent so it was happening much more rapidly at an accelerated pace than the projections out there at the time” he said.