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Washington (CNN) - Unemployment will go down in the coming year, but that doesn't mean U.S. economic woes are over, leading economic figures said Sunday.

Appearing on the NBC program "Meet the Press," former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Christina Romer, chairman of the White House Council on Economic Advisers, both made qualified predictions for economic growth and decreasing unemployment.

"I feel (it's) very likely it will be coming down," Romer said of the unemployment rate, but warned some "bumps" are likely in the coming year.

Greenspan noted upcoming boosts to employment, such as more than 700,000 people working in 2010 to conduct the federal census.

Unemployment "is going to be lower," Greenspan said, mostly due to people returning to the labor force.
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WASHINGTON (CNN) – One of the president’s top economic advisers said Sunday that the nation’s recessionary economy has begun to turn around but there’s still a ways to go to get back to economic growth.

“We did get some positive news this week,” Romer said of reports that the gross domestic product contracted just 1.0 percent in the second quarter of this year.

“The slowdown is certainly slowing down,” Romer said, comparing the second quarter GDP figure to the 6.4 percent GDP contraction in the first quarter. “But we still have a ways to go before we hit bottom and certainly it’s gonna be a long, hard slog getting out of this.”

“We, like most private forecasters, think that real GDP growth will probably turn positive before the end of the year,” Romer told CNN National Political Correspondent Jessica Yellin, ”but that’s just the first step. You’ve got to start growing again before you start adding jobs. But the other thing is you’ve got to grow quickly to really bring the unemployment rate down.”
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WASHINGTON (CNN) – The only woman in President Obama’s inner circle of economic advisers said Sunday that she has no trouble holding her own with likes of Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

“I’m right up there with the boys,” Christina Romer, the Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

Watch: Romer on 'the boys'

“The economics team has a lot of strong personalities. I’m actually one of them,” Romer told CNN National Political Correspondent Jessica Yellin.

“I do sometimes have to interrupt them,” Romer said of Summers and Geithner, “because they do both like to talk. But, absolutely, I feel my voice is heard.

“The president is great at this,” she added. “He is very careful to make sure that every voice is heard and he made it clear he wants to hear from all of us.”

Romer also said the economics team has “some very frank discussions.”

“But it’s actually great. There’s a big feeling of mutual respect. We argue. We think about things. And then we bring recommendations to the president and I’m pretty proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish.”

WASHINGTON (CNN) – President Obama's economic advisers on Sunday refused to endorse a House bill that would levy a 90 percent tax on bonuses paid out by companies that receive bailout money, with one administration official describing the plan as potentially "dangerous."

Fueled by anger over more than $165 million in bonuses paid out by insurance giant AIG, the House passed the punitive tax bill on Thursday in a 328 to 93 vote

Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joe Biden's top economic adviser, told ABC's "This Week" that the bill "may go too far in terms of some legal issues, constitutional validity, using the tax code to surgically punish a small group.  That may be a dangerous way to go."

Bernstein noted that that private investors the government needs to carry out its toxic assets plan might be scared away by such a tax.

Christina Romer, who chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told CNN's "State of the Union" that the president believes "it's completely appropriate to have different standards" for firms that have taken federal funds.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) – President Obama’s lead economist predicted Sunday that the nation’s struggling, recessionary economy will be growing by the end of the year.

“I have every expectation, as do private forecasters, that we will bottom out this year,” Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on CNN’s State of the Union. “And, [we’ll] actually be growing again by the end of the year.”

Romer’s comments came in a wide-ranging interview with Chief National Correspondent John King where she defended the new administration’s economic policies in the face of growing criticism by Republicans – particularly over how Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner handled payment of $165 million in bonuses to AIG employees and how Geithner has been slow to roll out the specifics of his plan to stabilize some of the nation’s largest banks.

“I think it is important to realize this is just one piece of what we're doing,” Romer said of the detailed Geithner bank rescue plan expected any day now. Romer pointed out that in the roughly nine weeks since Obama’s inauguration, the White House has rolled out a housing plan, a small-business plan, and a consumer and business lending initiative. “This is just one more of those pieces, and I don't think Wall Street is expecting the silver bullet . . . there’ll be more to come.”

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WASHINGTON (CNN) - She is known for her cheery disposition and motherly demeanor, especially beside some of the dour faces that surround her, but Christina Romer, the president's chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisors, is delivering the cold, hard facts on the nation's new jobless numbers. Making her way from camera to camera, Romer is the face of the administration's bad news.

"I think there's no way we could or should spin these. They are terrible. We know that we've lost now more than 650,000 jobs each of the last three months, and that's a tragedy for the American families that are losing those jobs and for the whole economy," Romer told CNN.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the February unemployment figures, which showed an increase from 7.6 to 8.1 percent - numbers Romer said were not surprising. "I think the important thing is they were much of what we expected. But they are still very bad," she said. "The unemployment rate clearly went up a little bit more than the market had been expecting. The job loss is just what we were expecting."

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