Critics accuse Obama of too much hope

Despite Barack Obama’s optimistic speech last week, many critics don’t yet see a bottom to the US recession, writes Niall Stanage in New York

Barack Obama’s critics have periodically accused him of being too gloomy about America’s economy in the three months since he took office. Now he is taking a different tack. In a major speech last Tuesday, Obama injected a note of pronounced optimism.

‘‘By no means are we out of the woods just yet,” he told his audience at Georgetown University in Washington DC. ‘‘But from where we stand, for the first time, we ...