Reuters.com reports Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said that solid progress has been made in stabilizing the U.S. financial system but it will take considerable time to restore it to health. "In terms of where we need to be, in the first case we were dealing with systemic events. ... We've got a lot of work to do to restore the financial system, and I think restoring the financial system will go a long way toward helping the economy to recover," Paulson said at a conference organized by The Wall Street Journal. At the same conference, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said he felt the economy will need "speedy, substantial, sustained" stimulus lasting for years in order to fully recover. Paulson said there were signs that multiple efforts to get the financial system working better were paying off. "If the issue was to stabilize the financial system and prevent a collapse and get by the point where the market is rattled, wondering which big institution will go down next, I think on a scale of 1 to 10 we're very close to 10 there." he said. But he cautioned that a weakening housing sector means the recovery process will be prolonged. "There's going to be stress in the capital markets for a number of months here because housing prices are still declining and now I think it's moved beyond housing," Paulson said.