Obama says U.S. economy risks "negative spiral"

President Barack Obama said on Monday that if the government failed to act, the U.S. economy risked sinking into a "negative spiral" that could prolong the current recession.

"This is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill recession. We are going through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression," Obama told a news conference, citing Japan's "Lost Decade" of the 1990s as an example of what can happen when an economy fails to revive.

"We've lost now 3.6 million jobs. But what's perhaps even more disturbing is almost half of that job loss has taken place over the last three months -- which means that the problems are accelerating instead of getting better," Obama said, repeating his call for swift passage of a roughly $800 billion economic stimulus plan.

"I'm absolutely confident that we can solve this problem but it is going to require that we take some important steps," he said.

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