On September 24th and 25th, the world's
financial representatives and leaders came together to discuss economic
policies and to address the global financial crisis in Pittsburgh. leaders, installing themselves as permanent stewards of
the world economy for the first time, agreed on a tighter regime for bankers'
bonuses and mapped out an economic order in which countries would be urged to
co-operate to avoid building up excessive trade deficits or surpluses.
Gordon Brown hailed the result
of the summit in the former steelmaking city of Pittsburgh as a victory for
British thinking and persistence, insisting the economic regime would have an
impact in restoring balanced growth.
The G20 leaders agreed a system
whereby they would collectively agree broad objectives every year, and then
make themselves subject to a form of peer review supervised by the IMF.
The aim will be to encourage
over-consuming countries, such as the US, to scale back spending and prompt
those countries hoarding big surpluses, such as China and Germany, to boost
consumer demand.
Barack Obama described the agreement
as the opening of a "new era of engagement". "We cannot tolerate
the same old boom and bust economies of the past," he said at the close of
the two-day summit. "We can't grow complacent. We can't wait for a crisis,
to co-operate."
The G20 also agreed to continue
with the current stimulus measures, saying they had been effective in
preventing the recession tipping into a great depression. The IMF is now
predicting 3% growth worldwide next year, but Brown said "the recovery is
still very fragile".
He claimed the
stimulus measures implemented so far had saved 10 million jobs worldwide and a
further 15 million could be saved in the coming year.
Dr.Shaukat Ali, Associate Professor of Business &Finance at New York's Long Island University talks about the issues discussed and resolved at the just concluded Pittsburgh G-20 Summit.
