Outgoing Obama Adviser: Stimulus was Right to Do

On her last day on the job Friday as chair of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer saw the national unemployment rate inch back up to a disheartening 9.6 percent.

"I would give anything if the unemployment rate were a lot lower," Romer said in a CBS News interview in her office.

In January 2009, the month she took over at the council, the national rate was 7.6 percent. Her own council projects the unemployment rate won't be back in the mid-7-percent range until sometime in 2013.

But like the president that made her a top economic adviser, Romer is hopeful and optimistic.

She said the unemployment numbers for last month were "better than most analysts were expecting." She points to the 67,000 jobs created in the private sector, calling it "a sign the recovery is continuing," while conceding it's not happening nearly as rapidly as the White House would like.

And though the number of private sector jobs increased in August, the overall economy lost 54,000 jobs, producing the uptick in the unemployment rate.

"The reason it ticked up is that a lot of people came back into the labor force," which she said grew by more than half a million. Also, 114,000 temporary jobs at the Census Bureau came to an end in August.

"That we have to get that 9.6 percent down quickly is absolutely true and something the president thinks about every single day," Romer said.

Unemployment Rate Rises to 9.6% in August
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Unemployment Rises, but Economy Isn't Falling

She's leaving her White House post for family reasons, including a 14-year-old son who started school Thursday back in California. Romer will be returning to academia at the University of California in Berkeley where she is a professor of economics. She got her Ph.D. from M.I.T. and also taught at Princeton.

Christina Romer, Obama Economic Adviser, Resigns

During her 19 months in the White House, she has been one of several advisers helping Mr. Obama grapple with what he often says is the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The problem, she said, boils down to how to get consumer spending up, which will promote growth and hiring in the rest of the economy.

On her watch, trillions of dollars have been spent to do just that, but she doesn't think the government has spent too much.

"I think that if you look at the difficult situation that we're in, thank heavens we did the spending and the tax cuts we did in the Recovery Act," Romer said.

Since she assumed her post, the national debt grew by $2.8 trillion to $13.4 trillion. That's 92 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, the market value of the nation's output of goods and services.

"I don't want to sugar coat this; we do have a medium and long-run fiscal problem, no question about that, it's got to be dealt with," she said of record-high budget deficits and national debt. But she thinks the bailout of big banks and Wall Street firms was the right thing to do.

"It was the right decision," said Romer, "and it's what prevented a great depression."

As of this weekend, the responsibility for advising the president on massive economic problems is lifted from her shoulders as she heads back to life in academia.

"It will be wonderful to be back in Berkeley," she said, smiling broadly, "and it will certainly be different."

She says serving as head of the president's council "has been an amazing honor."

"It's been harder than anything I've done before," she said.

But Romer admits "it will certainly be nice to be back to my students and back to Berkeley."