President Bush with Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., left, and Prime Minister Taro Aso of Japan at the Group of 20 summit in Washington on Saturday.Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
World Leaders Agree to Act Together on Financial Crisis
Facing the gravest global economic crisis in many decades, the leaders of 20 countries agreed Saturday to work more closely to reinvigorate their economies, but put off the thornier questions of how to overhaul regulation until next year, effectively giving a major assignment to the Obama administration.
Meeting here, in the capital of the country where the crisis began, leaders from the United States, France, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and other nations began an effort that the countries said would be a far-reaching reform of the institutions that have governed global markets since World War II.
In a five-page communiqué that mixed broad principles with specific steps to be tackled in the next three months, the Group of 20 pledged to bolster supervision of banks and credit-rating agencies, to scrutinize executive pay at firms, and to use fiscal and monetary policies to cushion the blow of a downturn that is hitting countries around the world.
The meeting laid out a roadmap for overhauling financial regulations that would postpone most of the difficult decisions until Mr. Obama is in office.
November 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/washington/16leaders.html?ref=world
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