Washington  - US President Barack Obama entered office with the United States facing a disastrous economic crisis, coupled with sky-high hopes that his administration could breathe new life into the world's largest economy.

As he approaches 100 days in the White House on Wednesday - a kind of report-card anniversary in the United States for a new administration's performance - Obama is not yet able to deliver a turnaround.

But the administration can point to a slowing of the downturn both in the United States and around the world over the last few weeks - what Obama has called "glimmers of hope" in the manufacturing, housing and financial sectors.

Those glimmers come after an incredibly turbulent three months for the young administration - an up-and-down ride that is mirrored by the performance of the US stock market.

While nearly 2 million people filled Washington's National Mall to watch the president take the oath of office January 20, Obama was greeted with the largest-ever inauguration day plunge on Wall Street. Major stock indices fell to a 12-year low on March 9 but have since shot up at the fastest pace since the Great Depression.

The first global recession since World War II has dominated Obama's administration to date and fuelled an unprecedented government spending effort to reverse the trend.

A 787-billion-dollar economic stimulus package, the largest in US history, was approved within weeks of Obama's inauguration. The Federal Reserve and Treasury Department have launched a series of multi-trillion-dollar programmes to help revive the financial sector.

Internationally, Obama pushed through a 500-billion-dollar boost in the International Monetary Fund's lending resources to help cash- strapped countries, during an emergency G20 summit on April 2. But European governments balked at Obama's push to further boost their own stimulus spending.

Altogether, US government loans, spending and guarantees now total more than 10 trillion dollars. But with the money and stakes so high, the president and his team have taken criticism from all sides.

Conservatives have slammed Obama's economic prescriptions as European-style intervention that raises the federal deficit to dangerous levels.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, in an unusually candid press conference in March, said he was "concerned" about his government's massive debt holdings in the United States. The US federal budget deficit is projected to swell to more than 13 per cent this year.

Left-leaning groups, by contrast, including Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman, have criticized Obama for not spending enough, arguing that more is needed to replace a dramatic pull back in private consumption.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has borne the brunt of the criticism. His roll-out of the administration's financial rescue plans in January was trashed by financial markets for lacking details.

Geithner even faced some calls to resign barely a month into his tenure, as public anger swelled over outrageous bonuses taken by financial executives who had helped drive the economy into the ground.

Part of the problem has been getting the Treasury's team in place. Two months into the administration, many of the department's top posts had gone unfulfilled, the result of a tough vetting process after Geithner's own nomination was nearly derailed by his own personal tax irregularities.

The criticism has died down in recent weeks. The financial sector has begun to show signs of life, and Geithner disclosed more key details of his recovery plan, including a trillion-dollar public- private effort to buy up troubled mortgage assets at the epicentre of the financial collapse.

But these are early days. IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss- Kahn warned last week that efforts to clean up the US financial sector were "far from what we need," and Obama's administration is all too aware of the pitfalls.

"We are right to be somewhat encouraged," Geithner said Friday, "but we would be wrong to conclude that we are close to emerging from the darkness." (dpa)