President Barack Obama is mulling whether to inject more public funds into the struggling jobs market in the United States, taking advantage of a cheaper-than-expected financial bail-out over the past year, according to dpa. Obama was expected to unveil a package of measures to tackle unemployment during a major economic speech on Tuesday. The country"s jobless rate unexpectedly fell in November to 10 per cent, but remains at a 26-year high. The president has been given some extra wiggle room because of the stabilizing financial system: The Treasury Department is cutting its long-term cost projections for the government"s bail-out programme by 200 billion dollars, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. The 700-billion-dollar financial rescue package, which was approved by Congress in October 2008 to help keep Wall Street afloat, is now expected to cost just 141 billion dollars over the next 10 years as many banks have already paid back their emergency loans. More than 70 billion dollars in loans have already been returned and Bank of America announced last week that it, too, planned to pay back the 45 billion dollars it was given at the height of the financial crisis. The lower cost comes as welcome news for an administration that has been heavily criticized for running a sky-high budget deficit in order to wrest the US economy out of recession. The White House and Congress have signalled that they will use the new-found funds to stimulate job growth.
