Stimulus plan beginning to have its impact: Summers

The USD 787-billion stimulus plan has started showing some signs of positive impact on the US economy within a month of being put into force, a top adviser of US president Barack Obama said.
    
"It is modestly encouraging that since it began to take shape, consumer spending in the US, which was collapsing during the holiday season, appears, according to a number of indicators, to have stabilised," National Economic Council director Lawrence H Summers said on Friday.
    
Delivering his major economic policy speech at the prestigious Brookings Institute, Summers, however, candidly acknowledged that it is "surely" too early to gauge the broader economic impact of the President’s programme.
    
Summers is said to be the man behind the stimulus plan, the largest peacetime economic expansion programme in the US history. It will inject nearly USD 800 billion into the economy, three-fourth of it within the next 18 months.
    
The plan, he said would save or create about 3.5 million jobs, double renewable energy capacity in next three years, support middle-class incomes, modernising 10,000 schools, and making the largest investment in the past 50 years.
    
"Already, its impact is being felt by cops and teachers who would have been laid off but whose jobs have been saved — it may retain 14,000 teachers in New York alone," Summers said.