Obama set to sign $787bn economic stimulus package

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama launches an economic whirlwind this week, signing the newly passed $787 billion (€611bn) economic stimulus package in Colorado, before moving to Arizona to tackle the home mortgage foreclosure crisis.

As he struggles to lift the country from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, Obama termed passage of the stimulus package a “major milestone on our road to recovery”.

Of perhaps equal importance will be his effort to reverse the collapsing housing market that triggered a financial crisis of still-unknown proportions.