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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Tom McCarthy in New York

Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama and criticises Romney's foreign policy

President Obama and Colin Powell
Barack Obama with former secretary of state Colin Powell in this December 2010. Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters

Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for the presidency in 2008 – and he repeated it again for 2012 on Thursday.

The former Bush administration secretary of State chose CBS's This Morning show to back Obama, telling the hosts:

When he took over, the country was in very very difficult straits. We were in the one of the worst recessions we had seen in recent times, close to a depression. The fiscal system was collapsing. Wall Street was in chaos, we had 800,000 jobs lost in that first month of the Obama administration and unemployment peaked a few months later at 10%. So we were in real trouble. The auto industry was collapsing, the housing was start[ing] to collapse and we were in very difficult straits. And I saw over the next several years, stabilization come back in the financial community, housing is now starting to pick up after four years, it's starting to pick up. Consumer confidence is rising.

For more on this story, visit our US politics live blog.

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