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Greenspan: Modest economic recovery 'in a pause'

AP Photo WXSC112

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says he thinks the economy is having a modest recovery, but right now there's a "pause" in that recovery, so it feels like a "quasi-recession."

Greenspan says long-term unemployment is pulling the economy apart even though large banks are doing much better and large companies are in excellent shape.

Greenspan predicts that unemployment will remain where it is, hovering around 9.5 percent, for the rest of the year.

Cheering the comeback of the stock market, Greenspan tells NBC television's "Meet the Press" that a rising stock market will do more to stimulate the economy than any of the remedies now being discussed.