Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said in an interview on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" he believes the U.S. economy is not in a poor state and that he believed problems caused by the subprime mortgage crisis would be resolved soon. The crisis has not had a major impact on the Japanese economy, he said through an interpreter.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japan's prime minister said on Sunday that he does not see the deepening U.S. housing slump and credit crisis triggering a global recession.
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said in an interview on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" he believes the U.S. economy is not in a poor state and that he believed problems caused by the subprime mortgage crisis would be resolved soon. The crisis has not had a major impact on the Japanese economy, he said through an interpreter.
"So I believe at the end of the day, this problem will disappear," he said.
Fukuda was in Washington last Friday, his first since taking office in September, for a brief summit with President George W. Bush.
!ADVERTISEMENT!The Federal Reserve has twice cut benchmark U.S. interest rates in the last two months to buffer the economy against a housing downturn and tighter credit conditions.
At its most recent meeting, the Fed's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee in cutting the federal funds rate cited its expectation that "economic expansion will likely slow in the near term" because of the housing sector's problems.
The prime minister said to date, the Japanese economy had not felt any major impact from this but "we certainly have to watch very carefully and we hope that the United States will manage its kind of policy correctly."
(Reporting by Nancy Waitz, editing by Maureen Bavdek)
