WASHINGTON (Bloomberg) — The US economy is no longer collapsing and the path to recovery "will be a long one", said Lawrence Summers, director of the White House's National Economic Council.

"We've come a long way" from an economy "in freefall at the beginning of this year", he said in an interview yesterday with Bloomberg Television in Washington. At the same time, he said, "the task of resuming growth and restoring normality in economic conditions will be a long one", and the pace of growth will depend on financial conditions and the global economy.

Policy makers are seeing signs of improvement in the economy and financial markets, such as fewer jobless claims and rising stock prices, even as the unemployment rate is poised to climb as high as 10 percent. Summers bolstered the view taken earlier this month by President Barack Obama, who said the $787 billion stimulus programme "has worked as intended".

"You no longer have that sense of a collapsing economy," said the 54-year-old former Treasury secretary and Harvard University president. "That's a tribute to the programme that the president put in place."

US stocks have surged on signs that the economic contraction will halt in the second half of the year. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index is up more than 40 percent from March 9, when it hit a 12-year low.