G20 seals $1.1 trillion deal

Reuters
Thursday, April 2, 2009

World leaders clinched a $1.1 trillion (748 billion pound) deal on Thursday to combat the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and tightened the rules to stop it happening again.

U.S. President Barack Obama played down differences at the summit and declared it a “turning point” for the world economy. French President Nicolas Sarkozy celebrated the waning of the Anglo-Saxon model linked by many to the excess that triggered the crisis.

Stocks rallied but economists cautioned against euphoria.

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“We have agreed on a series of unprecedented steps to restore growth and prevent a crisis like this from happening again,” Obama told a news conference. “We’ve also rejected the protectionism that could deepen this crisis.”

At the G20 summit, the leaders agreed to publish a blacklist of tax havens that could lead to sanctions — something France and Germany had pushed hard for — and to impose oversight on large hedge funds and credit rating agencies for the first time.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

“Today’s agreement begins to crack down on the cowboys in financial markets that have brought global markets undone,” Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said. 

Full story here.

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