Obama says second fiscal stimulus not needed yet

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday a second fiscal stimulus package was not needed yet, as the government wants to see how the economy evolves, but warned the unemployment rate would rise over 10 percent.

"Not yet because it is important to see how the economy evolves and how effective the first stimulus is. The stimulus package was the first thing we did and we did it a couple of weeks after inauguration," Obama said in response to a question.

"At that point, nobody understood what the depth of the recession was going to look like. ... It's not surprising then that we missed the mark in terms of our estimates of where unemployment would go. It's pretty clear that unemployment will end up going over 10 percent if you look at the pattern."

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Leslie Adler)