US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has suggested that the US recession could last for most of the year. He said the biggest risk was that the political will needed to fix the financial system could be lacking.
'This (economic) decline will begin to moderate and we'll begin to see a levelling off,' Bernanke said when pressed during an interview on the CBS television programme 60 Minutes about whether he sees the recession ending this year.
Bernanke told the US Congress in January that the Fed believed there was a reasonable prospect the recession that took hold in December 2007 would end this year and that 2010 would be a year of recovery.
In the rare on-record interview, he largely stuck to that view, while suggesting recent developments may have dimmed the outlook slightly.
'We'll see the recession coming to an end probably this year,' Bernanke said. 'We'll see recovery beginning next year.'
