| US to host global finance talks | |||
George Bush, the US president, has offered to host an international conference aimed at overcoming the global financial crisis, without setting a firm date. Bush made the invitation on Saturday after meeting Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, and Jose Manuel Barroso, European Commission chief, at Camp David, Maryland. "I look forward to hosting this meeting in the near future ... so we can ensure that this crisis does not happen again," Bush said. The three leaders are trying to find ways to tackle the most severe global economic crisis since the US Great Depression of the 1930s. "The first task is to stabilise the financial markets in our own countries. Given that the world has never been more interconnected, it is essential that we work together," Bush said. Appeal to change Sarkozy called for world leaders to work together to drastically change the character of the global financial system. "This is a worldwide crisis, so we must find a worldwide solution. Each region of the world is trying to find an answer to the crisis, but this answer will be all the more effective if we find it together and build the capitalism of the future," he said. "I deeply believe that this is a great opportunity to not fall back into the hateful practives of the past; practives that have led to where we are now." Nick Spicer, Al Jazeera's correspondent at the White House in Washington DC, said the two presidents appear to have different views on how to tackle the crisis. "Bush talked about the need for 'democratic capitalism' to be defended, including free markets ... while in the European perspective, Sarkozy talked about rebuilding a better capitalism, using more dreamy rhetoric," he said. "I think that highlights the clash that will be upcoming in the summit that Bush said he would be pleased to welcome - but one can ask how much can be achieved while Bush is a lame duck president." Rescue plan In recent days Bush has spoken of the need for change within the global financial system, after the US congress passed a $700bn bailout plan aimed at rescuing ailing US banks. Stock markets around the world have plunged in recent weeks in the wake of the collapse of Bear Stearns, a US investment bank, and a string of nationalisations and partial nationalisations of banks by European govermments. In a speech in Washington on Friday, Bush had said that new regulation of the financial sector could result in "undesirable consequences" for the wider economy. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said on Saturday that he had "strong support" for a meeting involving world leaders and representatives from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. "We both agree that there is no time to lose, and therefore, I fully subscribe to your idea of convening such a forum in early December at the latest," Ban said in a letter to Sarkozy, who had proposed the summit on Saturday while at the Francophonie summit in Quebec, Canada. The meeting proposed by Bush is likely to cover different ground to the summit suggested by Sarkozy, Spicer said. "When Sarkozy, Barroso and Bush meet they would not be talking about
re-founding the IMF or creating a new type of capitalism, which Sarkozy
has been calling for," he said. Ban has offered the summit proposed by Sarkozy to be held at the UN secretariat in New York, saying this would "lend universal legitimacy to this endeavour and demonstrate a collective will to face this serious global challenge." The global financial crisis has been most acutely felt in Iceland, which is on the verge of bankruptcy. Three of the country’s major banks have been nationalised after they failed to meet loan commitments to other banks. Icelandic leaders have appealed to Russia to lend soft loans, but Moscow has so far not made any commitment on lending. |
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US to host global finance talks
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