US President George Bush said the fundamentals for US economic "vitality and growth" are good and that he has "great confidence" in vice president Dick Cheney.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Bush said "the key thing for the American people is to realize that the fundamentals for economic vitality and growth are there...low interest rates...good monetary policy...productivity increases."
The president stressed that he supports remarks by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan yesterday that corporate America needs to change to a culture of responsibility from a culture of greed.
Asked why he has not asked vice president Cheney to talk about his tenure as the chief executive officer of oil services group Halliburton Co publicly, Bush replied: "First, I've got great confidence in the vice president, he is doing a heck of a good job."
The SEC is investigating certain accounting practices that occurred at Halliburton during Cheney's time as CEO. He left the company in 2000 to join Bush's campaign for the White House.
"That matter will run its course, the Halliburton investigation and the facts will come out at some point in time," Bush said.
Regarding reporters' questions about Bush's business dealings at Harken Energy Co, where he served on the board of directors in the late 1980s, Bush said a previous SEC investigation has cleared him of any wrongdoing.
"As to a look at Harken, the SEC, as a result of freedom of information requests, has released documents, and the key document said there's no case," Bush said.
"It was fully investigated by career investigators," Bush added.
The SEC investigated Bush during 1989-1990 after he filed a series of regulatory documents, related to a $840,000 stock sale in Harken Energy, months after they should have been filed with the SEC.
Bush, a director of Harken at the time of his stock sale, has said the documents were not filed on time because of administrative errors by his attorneys at the time, but the story has been re-ignited amid wider concerns about executive integrity at the likes of Tyco International and WorldCom Inc.