U.S. Treasury's Geithner more optimistic on economy

PARIS (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is more optimistic on the economic outlook than he was three months ago, he said in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde published on Friday.

"I am more optimistic than three months ago and I think that we are doing better than we could have imagined at the beginning of 2009," he said.

He also said the size of the U.S. fiscal deficit should not hurt investor confidence and repeated his belief that the U.S. dollar would remain the world's reserve currency.

It was not yet time to decide whether the United States needed a second stimulus plan, he said. (Reporting by Anna Willard and Estelle Shirbon)