Remarks by the President at the Export-Import Bank’s Annual Conference

11:30 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, everybody.  And thank you, John, for that generous introduction.  Congratulations to you and Fabienne and Luis for the recognition your companies so richly deserve.  And thank you to the Chairman of the Export-Import Bank, Fred Hochberg, for having me here today, and for all the important work the Ex-Im Bank is doing to help American businesses sell their ideas to the world.  I also want to recognize the Secretary General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, for his leadership at that institution.  (Applause.)

Let me also acknowledge some members of my economic team who are here today –- my Commerce Secretary, Gary Locke, who’s just returned from a trip to Brazil.  Where are you, Gary?  There he is, right here.  (Applause.)  Our U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Ron Kirk, who’s been putting in a lot of miles.  (Applause.)  They are both doing a great job in the work of moving this country forward in tough times.

Now, it has been our most pressing priority over the first year of my administration to deal with an unprecedented economic crisis — one that has been as serious as anything since the Great Depression.  To do that required difficult and sometimes unpopular steps to rescue our financial system and to jumpstart an economic recovery.  But we took those steps.  And because we did, we can stand here just over a year later, and say that we prevented another depression, we broke the back of the recession, and the economy that was shrinking a year ago is growing today.

What’s also clear is that we’ve got a long way to go.  More than 8 million Americans have lost their jobs since the start of the recession.  Millions more remain underemployed, including those doing part-time work or odd jobs.  And the middle class across this country has felt their economic security eroding for longer than they care to remember