Markets still in correction: Trichet

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet defended central bank responses to the financial turmoil that has roiled global markets for the past year and warned the storm is not over.

"We still are in a market correction," Trichet said at the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank's annual monetary policy conference that draws central bankers, economists and business people from around the world.

"What has been done until now has been pretty well done, it seems to me, under those very difficult circumstances," he said, responding from the conference audience to a paper critical of the reactions of the US Federal Reserve, the ECB and the Bank of England to financial turbulence.

The annual conference took place as market and economic conditions remain gloomy amid worries about bad credit, inflation, sluggish growth and high energy and commodity prices.

"This turmoil is not going to go away quickly and will require serious efforts to overcome it," a top official of the IMF, John Lipsky, said.

The forum has focused on fallout from the financial crisis that erupted in 2007. In the conference keynote address on Friday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the year-long financial storm "has not yet subsided".

The US economy may hit another bump in the final months of the year as the boost to spending from the government's $152 billion (Dh558.3bn) stimulus package wears off, a Congressional budget official said.

"The stimulus helped support consumption in the middle part of this year," Congressional Budget Office head Peter Orszag said.