Economy is recovering, Geithner, Paulson, Greenspan agree

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. economy was front and center on the talk shows Sunday, with administration officials past and present expressing guarded confidence that it's in a recovery mode.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, appearing on ABC News' "This Week," said he thinks the economy is back in growth mode and, "We're seeing some encouraging signs of healing" following better-than-expected unemployment data released Friday.

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Still, Geithner added, "This is going to take a while, and it's going to be uneven, but there are encouraging signs in this report."

Geithner also expressed confidence that the risk of a "double-dip" recession is receding.

"I think we have much, much lower risk of that today than at any time over the last 12 months or so," he said. "We are in an economy that was growing at the rate of almost 6% of GDP in the fourth quarter of last year," the fastest in almost six years.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Henry Paulson, Treasury secretary under President George W. Bush when the financial crisis began, said that, "The economy is clearly recovering. There is more certainty. Part of it is confidence and psychology ... but ultimately the private sector will do what needs to be done" to create jobs.

Joining Paulson on the program was former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who said that the jobs report "doesn't signal a turnaround, but a turnaround that has already occurred that is not moving aggressively. It is going to be a slow, trudging thing."

Paulson said the ballooning government deficit said that it is "by far the most serious long-term challenge" the nation faces and it will be a long time bringing it under control.

One of the things he learned in Washington, Paulson said, was that "it is difficult to get Congress to act on anything that is big and controversial unless there is an immediate crisis."

Greenspan said that if the U.S. continues to let the deficit grow, at some point, "We are going to find that our ability to borrow [will be] constrained. And history tells us that that great powers, when they have gotten into significant fiscal problems, cease to be great powers."

Speaking to the same point earlier on ABC, Geithner pointed out that President Barack Obama's budget is aimed at bringing the deficit down to below 4% of GDP over the next four years or so.

"And we want to work with Congress to set up a bipartisan commission to try to make sure that we're going beyond that to address our long-term problems," Geithner added.

He also insisted that the U.S. will not lose its triple-A government bond rating.

"That will never happen to this country," he said. "If you step back and look at what has happened throughout this crisis, when people were most worried about the stability of the world, they still found safety in Treasuries and the dollar."