US President Barack Obama admitted many Americans were not satisfied with his record on the economy, as long-serving aides yesterday launched a fightback against Republicans. Mr Obama’s approval rating on the struggling economy has dipped to 26 per cent in a Gallup poll as fears grow of a slump into a second recession and global stock markets plunge, clouding his 2012 re-election prospects.

“You’ve got an unemployment rate that is still too high, an economy that’s not growing fast enough,” Mr Obama said in an interview with CBS News taped during his economic-themed bus tour of three states last week.

“For me to argue, ‘look, we’ve actually made the right decisions, things would have been much worse had we not made those decisions,’ that’s not that satisfying if you don’t have a job right now,” he said.

“And I understand that and I expect to be judged a year from now on whether or not things have continued to get better.”

The President dismissed fears of a second recession which have spooked the markets but argued that outside factors like the European debt crisis, Japan’s tsunami and the Arab spring had hit economic growth.

“I don’t think we’re in danger of another recession, but we are in danger of not having a recovery that’s fast enough to deal with what is a genuine unemployment crisis for a whole lot of folks out there - and that’s why we need to be doing more,” he said.

Mr Obama has accused Republicans of blocking his plans to create jobs and revive the economic recovery, and of putting their own political gain ahead of their nation’s needs.

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