Caterpillar Inc.'s CEO Doug Oberhelman had great company news to summarize on CNBC's "Closing Bell" this afternoon, and some generally encouraging comments about the U.S. economy and jobs.

It's not our job to be commenting on individual company's performance. Besides, Caterpillar's news release headline speaks for itself: "Caterpillar Third-Quarter Sales and Revenues an All-Time Record; Thousands of Jobs Added, and the 2011 Outlook Improves." The subdeck states, "2012 Sales and Revenues expected to be up 10 to 20 percent."

In the CNBC interview conducted by Closing Bell's Bill Griffith, Oberhelman discusses China's economic growth and market potential, the long-term growth in demand for commodities, and the European Union's financial woes. Oberhelman chairs the BRT's International Engagement Committee, and the comments are worth noting.

Griffith also asks him to assess the U.S. economy:

Well, it's a slow…very slow growth, and I would call it recovery. We are not looking for a double dip recession in the United States.  I wish I could predict a boom.  We're not predicting a boom, but we are predicting a relatively slow recovery. It's going to be slow growth and probably going to take a while. Our retail numbers in the United States are pretty good. Anecdotally our customers are feeling a little bit better, so I think with time the U.S. will sort its way through this, and I do not see a double dip.

That's consistent with the assessment offered on CNBC last week by Dave Cote, CEO of Honeywell and BRT's vice chairman.

Oberhelman also highlighted Caterpillar's contributions to the U.S. economy.

You know, we've added in the last 18 months, in the United States, 12,000 to our work force at Caterpillar.  These are American jobs, engineers, hourly people, production people, sales people. Twelve-thousand American workers since the recession at the beginning of 2010, and we're investing in the U.S. and outside the U.S. in the next 18 months as well, and we'll probably need more people on top of that, so we're feeling pretty good about where we are on that.

Growth that spreads throughout the supply chain and economy.