New York, Sep 15 (DPA) US stocks edged higher Monday, while President Barack Obama said the need for hundreds of billions of dollars in Wall Street bail-outs was easing as the economy recovers from recession.

In a speech at the historic Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, Obama said there were signs the US economy had turned a corner, and said the government was beginning to extricate itself from a series of dramatic interventions in financial markets.

He spoke one year after the collapse of investment banking giant Lehman Brothers Holdings, a bankruptcy that plunged Wall Street into its worst crisis since the Great Depression.

'Although I will never be satisfied while people are out of work and our financial system is weakened, we can be confident that the storms of the past two years are beginning to break,' Obama said.