In this new century, we live in a world that has grown smaller and more interconnected than at any time in history. Threats to our nation’s security and economy can no longer be kept at bay by oceans or by borders drawn on maps. The terrorists who struck our country on 9/11 plotted in Hamburg, trained in Kandahar and Karachi, and threaten countries across the globe. Cars in Boston and Beijing are melting ice caps in the Arctic that disrupt weather patterns everywhere. The theft of nuclear material from the former Soviet Union could lead to the extermination of any city on earth. And reckless speculation by bankers in New York and London has fueled a global recession that is inflicting pain on workers and families around the world and across America.

The challenges of our time threaten the peace and prosperity of every single nation, and no one nation can meet them alone. That is why it is sometimes necessary for a President to travel abroad in order to protect and strengthen our nation here at home. That is what I have done this week.

I began my trip by attending a summit of the G20 – the countries that represent the world’s largest economies – because we know that the success of America’s economy is inextricably linked to that of the global economy. If people in other countries cannot spend, that means they cannot buy the goods we produce here in America, which means more lost jobs and more families hurting. Just yesterday, we learned that we lost hundreds of thousands more jobs last month, adding to the millions we’ve lost since this recession began. And if we continue to let banks and other financial institutions around the world act recklessly and irresponsibly, that affects institutions here at home as credit dries up, and people can’t get loans to buy a home or car, to run a small business or pay for college.

Ultimately, the only way out of a recession that is global in scope is with a response that is global in coordination. That is why I’m pleased that after two days of careful negotiation, the G20 nations have agreed on a series of unprecedented steps that I believe will be a turning point in our pursuit of a global economic recovery. All of us are now moving aggressively to get our banks lending again. All of us are working to spur growth and create jobs. And all of us have agreed on the most sweeping reform of our financial regulatory framework in a generation – reform that will help end the risky speculation and market abuses that have cost so many people so much.

I also met this past week with the leaders of China and Russia, working to forge constructive relationships to address issues of common concern, while being frank with each other about where we disagree. President Hu and I agreed that the link between China’s economy and ours is of great mutual benefit, and we established a new Strategic and Economic Dialogue between the U.S. and China. President Medvedev and I discussed our shared commitment to a world without nuclear weapons, and we signed a declaration putting America and Russia on the path to a new treaty to further reduce our nuclear arsenals. Tomorrow, I will lay out additional steps we must take to secure the world’s loose nuclear materials and stop the spread of these deadly weapons.

Finally, I met yesterday with our NATO allies and asked them for additional civilian support and assistance for our efforts in Afghanistan. That is where al Qaeda trains, plots, and threatens to launch their next attack. And that attack could occur in any nation, which means that every nation has a stake in ensuring that our mission in Afghanistan succeeds.

As we have worked this week to find common ground and strengthen our alliances, we have not solved all of our problems. And we have not agreed on every point or every issue in every meeting. But we have made real and unprecedented progress – and will continue to do so in the weeks and months ahead.

Because in the end, we recognize that no corner of the globe can wall itself off from the threats of the twenty-first century, or from the needs and concerns of fellow nations. The only way forward is through shared and persistent efforts to combat fear and want wherever they exist. That is the challenge of our time. And if we move forward with courage and resolve, I am confident that we will meet this challenge.

Thank you.

6:44 P.M. (Local)

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Earlier today, we finished a very productive summit that will be, I believe, a turning point in our pursuit of global economic recovery.

By any measure, the London summit was historic.  It was historic because of the size and the scope of the challenges that we face, and because of the timeliness and magnitude of our response.

The challenge is clear.  The global economy is contracting. Trade is shrinking.  Unemployment is rising.  The international finance system is nearly frozen.  Even these facts can’t fully capture the crisis that we’re confronting, because behind them is the pain and uncertainty that so many people are facing.  We see it back in the United States.  We see it here in London.  We see it around the world:  families losing their homes, workers losing their jobs and their savings, students who are deferring their dreams.  So many have lost so much.  Just to underscore this point, back in the United States, jobless claims released today were the highest in 26 years.  We owe it to all of our citizens to act, and to act with a sense of urgency.

In an age where our economies are linked more closely than ever before, the whole world has been touched by this devastating downturn.  And today, the world’s leaders have responded with an unprecedented set of comprehensive and coordinated actions.

Now, just keep in mind some historical context.  Faced with similar global challenges in the past, the world was slow to act, and people paid an enormous price.  That was true in the Great Depression, when nations prolonged and worsened the crisis by turning inward, waiting for more than a decade to meet the challenge together.  Even as recently as the 1980s, the slow global response deepened and widened a debt crisis in Latin America that pushed millions into poverty.

Today, we’ve learned the lessons of history.  I know that in the days leading up to the summit, some of you in the press, some commentators, confused honest and open debate with irreconcilable differences.  But after weeks of preparation, and two days of careful negotiation, we have agreed on a series of unprecedented steps to restore growth and prevent a crisis like this from happening again.

Let me outline what I think has been most significant.

Number one, we are committed to growth and job creation.  All G20 nations have acted to stimulate demand, which will total well over $2 trillion in global fiscal expansion.  The United States is also partnering with the private sector to clean out the troubled assets, the legacy assets that are crippling some banks, and using the full force of the government to ensure that our action leads directly to loans to businesses large and small, as well as individuals who depend on credit.  And these efforts will be amplified by our G20 partners, who are pursuing similarly comprehensive programs.

And we also agreed on bold action to support developing countries, so that we aren’t faced with declining markets that the global economy depends on.  Together, the G20 is tripling the IMF’s lending capacity and promoting lending by multilateral development banks to increase the purchasing power and expand markets in every country.

We’ve also rejected the protectionism that could deepen this crisis.  History tells us that turning inward can help turn a downturn into a depression.  And this cooperation between the world’s leading economies signals our support for open markets, as does our multilateral commitment to trade finance that will grow our exports and create new jobs.

That’s all on the growth front.

And next we made enormous strides in committing ourselves to comprehensive reform of a failed regulatory system.  And together, I believe that we must put an end to the bubble-and-bust economy that has stood in the way of sustained growth and enabled abusive risk-taking that endangers our prosperity.

At home, back in the States, our efforts began with the approach that Secretary Geithner proposed last week, the strongest regulatory reforms any nation has contemplated so far to prevent the massive failure of responsibility that we have already seen.  Today, these principles have informed and enabled the coordinated action that we will take with our G20 partners.

To prevent future crises, we agreed to increased transparency and capital protections for financial institutions. We’re extending supervision to all systemically important institutions, markets and products, including hedge funds.  We’ll identify jurisdictions that fail to cooperate, including tax havens, and take action to defend our financial system.  We will reestablish the Financial Stability Forum with a stronger mandate.  And we will reform and expand the IMF and World Bank so they are more efficient, effective and representative.

Finally, we are protecting those who don’t always have a voice at the G20, but who have suffered greatly in this crisis.  And the United States is ready to lead in this endeavor.  In the coming days, I intend to work with Congress to provide $448 million in immediate assistance to vulnerable populations — from Africa to Latin America — and to double support for food safety to over $1 billion so that we are giving people the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty.  We will also support the United Nations and World Bank as they coordinate the rapid assistance necessary to prevent humanitarian catastrophe.

I have to say, though, that this is not just charity.  These are all future markets for all countries, and future drivers of world economic growth.

Let me also underscore my appreciation to Prime Minister Brown, his entire team, and all my colleagues from around the world who contributed to the summit’s success.  You know, it’s hard for 20 heads of state to bridge their differences.  We’ve all got our own national policies; we all have our own assumptions, our own political cultures.  But our citizens are all hurting.  They all need us to come together.  So I’m pleased that the G20 has agreed to meet again this fall, because I believe that this is just the beginning.  Our problems are not going to be solved in one meeting; they’re not going to be solved in two meetings.  We’re going to have to be proactive in shaping events and persistent in monitoring our progress to determine whether further action is needed.

I also want to just make a few remarks about additional meetings I had outside of the G20 context.  While here in London I had the opportunity to hold bilateral meetings with leaders of Russia, China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and India, as well as Great Britain.  And these discussions were extraordinarily valuable and productive.  Of course, we spoke about additional steps to promote economic recovery and growth.  But we also discussed coordinated actions on a range of issues:  how we could reduce the nuclear threat; how we could forge a coordinated response to North Korea’s planned missile launch; how we can turn back terrorism and stabilize Afghanistan; how we can protect our planet from the scourge of climate change.  I’m encouraged that we laid the groundwork for real and lasting progress on a host of these issues.

Ultimately, the challenges of the 21st century can’t be met without collective action.  Agreement will almost never be easy, and results won’t always come quickly.  But I am committed to respecting different points of view, and to forging a consensus instead of dictating our terms.  That’s how we made progress in the last few days.  And that’s how we will advance and uphold our ideals in the months and years to come.

You know, at home, I’ve often spoken about a new era of responsibility.  And I believe strongly that this era must not end at our borders.  In a world that’s more and more interconnected, we all have responsibilities to work together to solve common challenges.  And although it will take time, I am confident that we will rebuild global prosperity if we act with a common sense of purpose, persistence, and the optimism that the moment demands.

So I appreciate your attention, and I’m going to take a few questions.  I’ve got a list of a few people I’m going to call on and then I will intersperse some folks I’m calling on randomly.

Helene Cooper.

Q    Mr. President, — (inaudible) –

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, I think we did okay.  You know, when I came here, it was with the intention of listening and learning, but also providing American leadership.  And I think that the document that has been produced as well as the concrete actions that will follow reflect a range of our priorities.

We wanted to make sure that we had a strong, coordinated response to growth — and that’s reflected in the document and in the actions that will be taken.  We thought it was important to make sure that we had a strong, coordinated regulatory response  — and many of the details of the regulatory response draw from principles that we had developed prior to coming here.

We felt that it was very important to strengthen our international financial institutions because developing countries, emerging markets are threatened — even though they may not have been the cause of this crisis — they are threatened by capital flight; they’re threatened by reduced trade finance; drops in consumer demand in developed countries that were their export markets, and so we knew that it was going to be important to provide those countries with assistance.  And we have created as fundamental a reworking of the resources available to these international financial institutions as anything we’ve done in the last several decades.

So, overall, I’m pleased with the product.  And I’ll leave it to others to determine whether me and my team had anything to do with that.  All right?

Chuck Todd.  Chuck.

Q    What concrete items that you got out of this G20 can you tell the American people back home who are hurting, the family struggling, seeing their retirement go down, or worrying about losing their job — what happened here today that helps that family back home in the heartland?

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, as I said before, we’ve got a global economy, and if we’re taking actions in isolation in the United States, but those actions are contradicted overseas, then we’re only going to be halfway effective — maybe not even half.

You’ve seen, for example, a drastic decline in U.S. exports over the last several months.  You look at a company like Caterpillar, in my home state of Illinois, which up until last year was doing extraordinarily well; in fact, export growth was what had sustained it even after the recession had begun.  As a consequence of the world recession, as a consequence of the contagion from the financial markets debilitating the economies elsewhere, Caterpillar is now in very bad shape.  So if we want to get Caterpillar back on its feet, if we want to get all those export companies back on their feet, so that they are hiring, putting people back to work, putting money in people’s pockets, we’ve got to make sure that the global economy as a whole is successful.

And this document, which affirms the need for all countries to take fiscal responses that increase demand, that encourages the openness of markets, those are all going to be helpful in us being able to fix what ails the economy back home.

Let me mix in a — Justin Webb, BBC.  Where’s Justin?  There he is.  Go ahead.

Q    Mr. President, in the spirit of openness, with which you say you’re –

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Why don’t you get a microphone?  See, everybody is complaining.  (Laughter.)  I’m sure that’s all your fellow British journalists.  (Laughter.)

Q    They’re extraordinarily well behaved, Mr. President.  (Laughter.)  In the spirit of openness, with which you say you’re going to run your administration, could you give us an insight into an area or areas where you came to London wanting something and you didn’t get it; where you compromised, where you gave something away to achieve the wider breakthrough agreement?

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, I think that if you look at the language of the document, there are probably some areas where it wasn’t so much of a sacrifice as it might not have been our number-one priority, but it became clear that it was very important to certain other actors.

I’d rather not specify what those precise items would be, because this is a collective document.  But there’s no doubt that each country has its own quirks and own particular issues that a leader may decide is really, really important; something that is non-negotiable for them.  And what we tried to do as much as possible was to accommodate those issues in a way that didn’t — did not hamper the effectiveness of the overall document to address what I think are the core issues related to this crisis.

Now, keep in mind — I think that this kind of coordination really is historic.  I said in the meeting that if you had imagined 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, or 30 years ago, that you’d have the leaders of Germany, France, China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, a President of the United States named Obama — (laughter) — former adversaries, in some cases former mortal enemies, negotiating this swiftly on behalf of fixing the global economy, you would have said, that’s crazy.  And yet it was happening, and it happened with relatively little — relatively few hiccups.  And I think that’s a testimony to the great work that Gordon Brown did, and his team, in organizing the summit, the collective work in our teams in doing some good preparation, some good ground work.  So I’m very proud of what’s been done.

This alone is not enough.  And obviously the actions that each of us take in our individual countries are still absolutely vital.  So we have a set of principles, for example, around dealing with systemic risk that I think will be very important in preventing the kinds of financial crises that we’ve seen.

That does not entirely solve the problem of toxic assets that are still in U.S. banks and certain British banks and certain European banks.  And how each individual nation acts to deal with that is still going to be vitally important.  How well we execute the respective stimulus programs around the world is going to be very important.  The quicker they are, the more effective they are at actually boosting demand, the more all of us will benefit.  The more encumbered they are by bureaucracy and mismanagement and corruption, that will hamper our development efforts as a whole.

So this is not a panacea, but it is a critical step, and I think it lays the foundation so that, should the actions that we’ve taken individually and collectively so far not succeed in boosting global demand and growth, should you continue to see a freezing of credit or a hemorrhaging of jobs around the world, I think we’ve created a good foundation for this leadership to come back together again and take additional steps until we get it right.

Okay, Michael Shear.  Where’s Michael?

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  I wonder if you view this trip that you’re on and the actions that you’ve taken here at the G20 and with the bilateral meetings that you’ve had as representing a break from the foreign policy of your predecessor. And if so, could you describe where you see and how you see the principles that guide a different view of the world?

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, you know, I didn’t accompany President Bush on his various summits, so I don’t know how he was operating.  And I won’t — I won’t warrant a guess on that.

I can tell you that what I’ve tried to do since I started running for President and since I was sworn in as President, is to communicate the notion that America is a critical actor and leader on the world stage, and that we shouldn’t be embarrassed about that, but that we exercise our leadership best when we are listening; when we recognize that the world is a complicated place and that we are going to have to act in partnership with other countries; when we lead by example; when we show some element of humility and recognize that we may not always have the best answer, but we can always encourage the best answer and support the best answer.

So I think that’s the — that’s the approach that we’ve tried to take in our foreign policy since my administration came in.  Now, we come in at extraordinarily challenging times, and yet I actually think that that calls for this type of leadership even more.  But, ultimately, we won’t know how effective we are until we look back a year from now, or two years from now, or three years from now and see if it worked.

And what the American people care about I suspect are the same thing that the British people care about, and that is, are you putting people back to work?  Are businesses growing again?  Is business — is credit flowing again?  And, you know — and that’s just true with respect to this summit.  But when it comes to our Afghanistan policy, the question is going to be, have we made ourselves safer; have we reduced the risks and incidents of terrorism?

And so the proof of the pudding is in the eating.  But hopefully, I think at least we’ve set a tone internationally where people don’t — where they give us the benefit of the doubt.  They’re still going to have their interests, and we’re going to have ours.  There are going to be tough negotiations, and sometimes we’re going to have to walk away from those negotiations if we can’t arrive at a common accord.  There are going to be real dangers that can’t always be talked through and have to be addressed.  But at least we can start with the notion that we’re prepared to listen and to work cooperatively with countries around the world.

All right, let me sprinkle in another — it’s got to be an international person.  All right, this young lady right there.

Q    Mr. President, Emma Alberici from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.  At the moment, in the U.S., the U.K., and in Australia, executive salaries and bonuses are decided in the boardrooms of major publicly listed companies.  Who will be making those decisions on salaries and bonuses as a result of the agreement you’ve made here today?  And if it is still the boards, will they be guided by principles or legislation?

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  The principles that we outlined I think put in place or move us in the direction of what I consider to be best practices, which is that there is some accountability with respect to executive compensation.

Now, theoretically, that should be the shareholders.  But the way that too many corporations have operated for too long is that you have a CEO who basically selects his board; the board, in a fairly cozy relationship oftentimes with the executive, hires a executive compensation firm, which, surprisingly, tends to think that it’s necessary to retain the best talent to pay people $20 or $30 million a year; and we get into the kinds of habits and practices that I think have not been — have not served shareholders well, I think ultimately distort the decision-making of many CEOs.

When I was in the United States Senate, I actually worked on a piece of legislation that would — made the simple proposition that executive compensation should be subject to a shareholder vote, even if it was nonbinding, so that there was transparency and accountability and perhaps a shame function that would take place.  And that principle, I think, is reflected in these guidelines.

What it says is, is that if you get shareholders involved and those shareholders are given a set of principles and best practices by which they can judge executive compensation, then you can still have outsized rewards and success for successful business people, but it will be based on not short-term performance, not three-month performance, not your ability to flip quick profits off products like derivatives that don’t turn out to be particularly productive to the company, but based on sustained, effective growth.  And that’s what’s embodied in these documents, and I think that you’re going to see a lot of countries try to encourage that kind of transparency and accountability.

It doesn’t mean the state micromanaging — ( sneezes) — excuse me — I’ve been fighting this all week — it doesn’t mean that we want the state dictating salaries; we don’t.  We — I strongly believe in a free-market system, and as I — as I think people understand in America, at least, people don’t resent the rich; they want to be rich.  And that’s good.  But we want to make sure that there’s mechanisms in place that holds people accountable and produces results.  Okay?

Got to go back to my crew.  Jake Tapper.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  Two questions.  One, can you say with confidence that the steps the G20 nations are taking today — committing to today will help the world, or will prevent the world to avoid a depression or a deeper recession?

And two, your friend and ally, Prime Minister Brown, said that “The old Washington consensus is over; today we have reached a new consensus.”  Is he right?  And what do you think he meant by that?

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  In life there are no guarantees; in economics there are no guarantees.  The people who thought they could provide guarantees, many of them worked at AIG and it didn’t work out so well.  So there are always risks involved.

I have no doubt, though, that the steps that have been taken are critical to preventing us sliding into a depression.  They are bolder and more rapid than any international response that we’ve seen to a financial crisis in memory.  And I think that they will have a concrete effect in our ability, individually, in each nation, to create jobs, save jobs that exist, grow the economy, loosen up credit, restore trust and confidence in the financial markets.

So these steps — another way of putting it is I think the steps in the communiqué were necessary.  Whether they’re sufficient, we’ve got to — we’ve got to wait and see.  I’m actually confident, though, that given the common commitment in the United States and in the other G20 countries to act rapidly and boldly, that if we see other inklings of panic in the marketplace, or things unwinding, that this group, once again, will respond as needed.

So I guess maybe just to use an analogy that was used several times in this meeting, an analogy that I’ve used in the past:  You got a sick patient; I think we applied the right medicine; I think the patient is stabilized; there’s still wounds that have to heal and there’s still emergencies that could arise, but I think that you’ve got some pretty good care being applied.

You had a second, follow-up question?

Q    Prime Minister Brown saying –

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Oh, the Washington consensus.  Well, the Washington consensus, as I’m sure you’re aware, Jake, is sort of a term of art about a certain set of policies surrounding globalization and the application of a cookie-cutter model to economic growth, trade liberalization, deregulation that was popular and did help globalize and grow the economy, and was led by some of our leading economists and policymakers in Washington.

I think that there’s always been a spectrum of opinion about how unfettered the free market is.  And along that spectrum, I think there have been some who believe in very fierce regulation and are very suspicious of globalization, and there are others who think that it’s always — that the market is always king.  And I think what we’ve learned here, but if anybody had been studying history they would have understood earlier, is that the market is the most effective mechanism for creating wealth and distributing resources to produce goods and services that history has ever known, but that it goes off the rail sometimes; that if it’s completely unregulated, that if there are no thoughtful frameworks to channel the creative energy of the market, that it can end up in a very bad place.

And so, in that sense, I think that we just went through a couple of decades where there was an artificial complacency about the dangers of markets going off the rails.  And a crisis like this reminds us that we just have to put in some common-sense rules of the road, without throwing out the enormous benefits that globalization have brought in terms of improving living standards, reducing the cost of goods, and bringing the world closer together.

All right, I’ve got time for just a couple more questions.  I’m going to find a journalist here –

Q    — (inaudible) — (Laughter.)

Q    How about me?

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  All right, I’m going to call on this gentleman right here.  He’s been very persistent.

Q    Excuse me.  China Central Television.  Since the world leaders have been talking about increasing the voice and voting rights of developing countries, I would like to ask two questions instead of just one.  First of all, on behalf of China –

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  I may choose which one I want to answer.  (Laughter.)

Q    Of course.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  That’s always the danger of asking two questions.  (Laughter.)

Q    First of all, you’ve had a very fruitful meeting with our President.  And during the Clinton administration, U.S.-China relationship were characterized, in Clinton’s words, “strategic, constructive partnership.”  During the Bush era, it was — the catchphrase was “stakeholder.”  The Bush administration expects China to become a responsible stakeholder in international affairs.  Have you come up with a catchphrase of your own?  And certainly it is not the G2, is it?

My second question is, on behalf of the world, politics is very local, even though we’ve been talking about global solution, as indicated by your recent preference over American journalists and British — which is okay.  (Laughter.)  How can you make sure that you will do whatever you can so that — that local politics will not trump or negatively affect good international economics? Thank you, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, those are excellent questions.  On the first question, your American counterparts will tell you I’m terrible with those little catchphrases and sound bites.  So I haven’t come up with anything catchy yet, but if you have any suggestions, let me know.  (Laughter.)  I’ll be happy to use them.

In terms of local politics, look, I’m the President of the United States.  I’m not the President of China, I’m not the President of Japan, I’m not the President of the other participants here.  And so I have a direct responsibility to my constituents to make their lives better.  That’s why they put me in there.  That accounts for some of the questions here, about how concretely does me being here help them find a job, pay for their home, send their kids to college, live what we call the American Dream.  And I will be judged by my effectiveness in meeting their needs and concerns.

But in an era of integration and interdependence, it is also my responsibility to lead America into recognizing that its interests, its fate is tied up with the larger world; that if we neglect or abandon those who are suffering in poverty, that not only are we depriving ourselves of potential opportunities for markets and economic growth, but ultimately that despair may turn to violence that turns on us; that unless we are concerned about the education of all children and not just our children, not only may we be depriving ourselves of the next great scientist who’s going to find the next new energy source that saves the planet, but we also may make people around the world much more vulnerable to anti-American propaganda.

So if I’m effective as America’s President right now, part of that effectiveness involves holding a — providing Americans insight into how their self-interest is tied up with yours.  And that’s an ongoing project because it’s not always obvious.

And there are going to be times where short-term interests are going to differ; there’s no doubt about it.  And protectionism is the classic example.  You can make arguments that if you can get away with protecting your markets, as long as the other folks don’t protect theirs, then in the short term you may benefit.  And it then becomes important not only for me to try to give people a sense of why, over the long term, that’s counterproductive, but also it becomes important for me to put policies in place in the United States that provide a cushion, provide support for those people who may suffer local dislocations because of globalization.  And that’s something that I think every government has to think about.

There are individuals who will be harmed by a trade deal.  There are businesses who will go out of business because of free trade.  And to the extent that a government is not there to help them reshape their company or retrain for the new jobs that are being created, over time you’re going to get people who see — who rightly see their personal self-interest in very narrow terms.  Okay?

Two more questions.  Jonathan Weisman.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  During the campaign you often spoke of a diminished power and authority of the United States over the last decade.  This is your first time in an international summit like this, and I’m wondering what evidence you saw of what you spoke of during the campaign.  And specifically, is the declaration of the end of the Washington consensus evidence of the diminished authority that you feared was out there?

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, first of all, during the campaign I did not say that some of that loss of authority was inevitable.  I said it was traced to very specific decisions that the previous administration had made that I believed had lowered our standing in the world.  And that wasn’t simply my opinion; that was, it turns out, the opinion of many people around the world.

I would like to think that with my election and the early decisions that we’ve made, that you’re starting to see some restoration of America’s standing in the world.  And although, as you know, I always mistrust polls, international polls seem to indicate that you’re seeing people more hopeful about America’s leadership.

Now, we remain the largest economy in the world by a pretty significant margin.  We remain the most powerful military on Earth.  Our production of culture, our politics, our media still have — I didn’t mean to say that with such scorn, guys — (laughter) — you know I’m teasing — still has enormous influence.  And so I do not buy into the notion that America can’t lead in the world.  I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think that we had important things to contribute.

I just think in a world that is as complex as it is, that it is very important for us to be able to forge partnerships as opposed to simply dictating solutions.  Just a — just to try to crystallize the example, there’s been a lot of comparison here about Bretton Woods.  “Oh, well, last time you saw the entire international architecture being remade.”  Well, if there’s just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy, that’s a — that’s an easier negotiation.  (Laughter.)  But that’s not the world we live in, and it shouldn’t be the world that we live in.

And so that’s not a loss for America; it’s an appreciation that Europe is now rebuilt and a powerhouse.  Japan is rebuilt, is a powerhouse.  China, India — these are all countries on the move.  And that’s good.  That means there are millions of people — billions of people — who are working their way out of poverty.  And over time, that potentially makes this a much more peaceful world.

And that’s the kind of leadership we need to show — one that helps guide that process of orderly integration without taking our eyes off the fact that it’s only as good as the benefits of individual families, individual children:  Is it giving them more opportunity; is it giving them a better life?  If we judge ourselves by those standards, then I think America can continue to show leadership for a very long time.

I’m going to call one foreigner — (laughter) — actually, I’m the foreigner.  That’s why I smiled.  One correspondent not from America.  And then I will — (loud commotion) — we’re not doing bidding here.  (Laughter.)  But I also want to make sure that I’m not showing gender bias.  So this young lady right here — not you, sir, I’m sorry.

Q    Hi, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  How are you?

Q    Thank you for choosing me.  I’m very well.  I’m from the Times of India.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Wonderful.

Q    You met with our Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.  What did you — what is America doing to help India tackle terrorism emanating from Pakistan?

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, first of all, your Prime Minister is a wonderful man.

Q    Thank you.  I agree.  (Laughter.)

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well –

Q    I agree.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Did you have something to do with that, or — (laughter.)  You seem to kind of take — take credit for it a little bit there.  (Laughter.)

Q    Really proud of him, sir.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Of course.  You should be proud of him.  I’m teasing you.

I think he’s a very wise and decent man, and has done a wonderful job in guiding India, even prior to being Prime Minister, along a path of extraordinary economic growth that is a marvel, I think, for all the world.

We did discuss the issue of terrorism.  And we discussed it not simply in terms of terrorism emanating from Pakistan, although obviously we are very concerned about extremists and terrorists who have made camp in the border regions of Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan.  But we spoke about it more broadly in terms of how we can coordinate effectively on issues of counterterrorism.

We also spoke about the fact that in a nuclear age, at a time when perhaps the greatest enemy of both India and Pakistan should be poverty, that it may make sense to create a more effective dialogue between India and Pakistan.  But obviously we didn’t go in depth into those issues.

We talked about a whole range of other issues related to, for example, energy, and how important it is for the United States to lead by example in reducing our carbon footprint so that we can help to forge agreements with countries like China and India that, on a per-capita basis, have a much smaller footprint and so justifiably chafe at the idea that they should have to sacrifice their development for our efforts to control climate change; but also acknowledging that if China and India, with their populations, had the same energy usage as the average American, then we would have all melted by now.

And so that was a very interesting conversation that I will be pursuing not just with India, but hopefully with China and with other countries around the world.  In some ways our European counterparts have moved more quickly than we have on this issue. But I think even the Europeans have recognized that it’s not easy.  It’s even harder during times of economic downturn.

And so we’re going to have to combine the low-hanging fruit of energy efficiency with rapid technological advances.  And to the extent that in some cases we can get international cooperation and pool our scientific and technical knowledge around things like developing coal sequestration, for example, that can be extremely helpful.  Okay?

I’m going to call on my last American correspondent, Chip.  And, Chip, my heart goes out to you.

Q    Thank you.  Thank you very much, Mr. President.  I appreciate that.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  I just heard about that.

Q    Certainly there is a lot of sentiment in G20 countries that the United States was a major cause of the global economic meltdown.  To what degree did that topic come up in your discussions?  Did it make it difficult for some countries to accept advice from the United States when they blame the United States and its economic system for causing this in the first place?  And how do you respond to people who do blame America?

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, you know, I don’t think that — I think my colleagues in the G20 were extraordinarily gracious about my participation.  I think that they continue to express the desire to work with America, admiration about many things American.  There were occasional comments, usually wedged into some other topic, that indicated from their perspective that this started in America, or this started on Wall Street, or this started with particular banks or companies.

Perhaps what helped was my willingness to acknowledge that  — and it’s hard to deny — that some of this contagion did start on Wall Street.  And as I’ve said back home, as I’ve said in public and as I would say in private, we had a number of firms that took wild and unjustified risks, we had regulators that were asleep at the switch, and it has taken an enormous toll on the U.S. economy and has spread to the world economy.

Now, I think that part of the reason people didn’t give me too hard a time is because if you look at European banks or Asian banks, that they’ve had their own issues both in the past and in the future.  And I think there was a very constructive discussion about the fact that, given global financial flows, that unless we’ve got much more effective coordinated regulatory strategies, supervision, standards, that these problems will appear again.

Money is — can move around the globe in a second.  And it will seek out the highest returns, and if those highest returns end up being built on a house of cards, then we’re going to be seeing another threat to the world financial system wherever that house of cards might be.

And so, overall, I think there was an extraordinarily constructive approach among all the leaders.  I was very impressed with them.  I’m very grateful to them.  And I’m excited about the ability not just to help heal this economy but also to make progress on a sustainable model of economic growth that relies less on a cycle of bubble and bust — something that I’ve spoken about back home.

All right?  Thank you, everybody.  Appreciate it.  (Applause.)

END           7:36 P.M. (Local)

1. We, the Leaders of the Group of Twenty, met in London on 2 April 2009.

2. We face the greatest challenge to the world economy in modern times; a crisis  which has deepened since we last met, which affects the lives of women, men, and children in every country, and which all countries must join together to resolve. A global crisis requires a global solution.

3. We start from the belief that prosperity is indivisible; that growth, to be sustained, has to be shared; and that our global plan for recovery must have at its heart the needs and jobs of hard-working families, not just in developed countries but in emerging markets and the poorest countries of the world too; and must reflect the interests, not just of today’s population, but of future generations too. We believe that the only sure foundation for sustainable globalisation and rising prosperity for all is an open world economy based on market principles, effective regulation, and strong global institutions.

4. We have today therefore pledged to do whatever is necessary to:

• restore confidence, growth, and jobs;
• repair the financial system to restore lending;
• strengthen financial regulation to rebuild trust;
• fund and reform our international financial institutions to overcome this crisis and prevent future ones;
• promote global trade and investment and reject protectionism, to underpin prosperity; and
• build an inclusive, green, and sustainable recovery.

By acting together to fulfil these pledges we will bring the world economy out of recession and prevent a crisis like this from recurring in the future.

5. The agreements we have reached today, to treble resources available to the IMF to $750 billion, to support a new SDR allocation of $250 billion, to support at least $100 billion of additional lending by the MDBs, to ensure $250 billion of support for trade finance, and to use the additional resources from agreed IMF gold sales for concessional finance for the poorest countries, constitute an additional $1.1 trillion programme of support to restore credit, growth and jobs in the world economy.  Together with the measures we have each taken nationally, this constitutes a global plan for recovery on an unprecedented scale.

Restoring growth and jobs

6. We are undertaking an unprecedented and concerted fiscal expansion, which will save or create millions of jobs which would otherwise have been destroyed, and that will, by the end of next year, amount to $5 trillion, raise output by 4 per cent, and accelerate the transition to a green economy.  We are committed to deliver the scale of sustained fiscal effort necessary to restore growth.

7. Our central banks have also taken exceptional action. Interest rates have been cut aggressively in most countries, and our central banks have pledged to maintain expansionary policies for as long as needed and to use the full range of monetary policy instruments, including unconventional instruments, consistent with price stability.

8. Our actions to restore growth cannot be effective until we restore domestic lending and international capital flows. We have provided significant and comprehensive support to our banking systems to provide liquidity, recapitalise financial institutions, and address decisively the problem of impaired assets.  We are committed to take all necessary actions to restore the normal flow of credit through the financial system and ensure the soundness of systemically important institutions, implementing our policies in line with the agreed G20 framework for restoring lending and repairing the financial sector.

9. Taken together, these actions will constitute the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus and the most comprehensive support programme for the financial sector in modern times. Acting together strengthens the impact and the exceptional policy actions announced so far must be implemented without delay. Today, we have further agreed over $1 trillion of additional resources for the world economy through our international financial institutions and trade finance.

10. Last month the IMF estimated that world growth in real terms would resume and rise to over 2 percent by the end of 2010. We are confident that the actions we have agreed today, and our unshakeable commitment to work together to restore growth and jobs, while preserving long-term fiscal sustainability, will accelerate the return to trend growth. We commit today to taking whatever action is necessary to secure that outcome, and we call on the IMF to assess regularly the actions taken and the global actions required.

11.  We are resolved to ensure long-term fiscal sustainability and price stability and will put in place credible exit strategies from the measures that need to be taken now to support the financial sector and restore global demand. We are convinced that by implementing our agreed policies we will limit the longer-term costs to our economies, thereby reducing the scale of the fiscal consolidation necessary over the longer term.

12. We will conduct all our economic policies cooperatively and responsibly with regard to the impact on other countries and will refrain from competitive devaluation of our currencies and promote a stable and well-functioning international monetary system.  We will support, now and in the future, to candid, even-handed, and independent IMF surveillance of our economies and financial sectors, of the impact of our policies on others, and of risks facing the global economy.

Strengthening financial supervision and regulation

13. Major failures in the financial sector and in financial regulation and supervision were fundamental causes of the crisis.  Confidence will not be restored until we rebuild trust in our financial system.  We will take action to build a stronger, more globally consistent, supervisory and regulatory framework for the future financial sector, which will support sustainable global growth and serve the needs of business and citizens.

14. We each agree to ensure our domestic regulatory systems are strong. But we also agree to establish the much greater consistency and systematic cooperation between countries, and the framework of internationally agreed high standards, that a global financial system requires.  Strengthened regulation and supervision must promote propriety, integrity and transparency; guard against risk across the financial system; dampen rather than amplify the financial and economic cycle; reduce reliance on inappropriately risky sources of financing; and discourage excessive risk-taking.  Regulators and supervisors must protect consumers and investors, support market discipline, avoid adverse impacts on other countries, reduce the scope for regulatory arbitrage, support competition and dynamism, and keep pace with innovation in the marketplace.

15. To this end we are implementing the Action Plan agreed at our last meeting, as set out in the attached progress report. We have today also issued a Declaration, Strengthening the Financial System.  In particular we agree:

• to establish a new Financial Stability Board (FSB) with a strengthened mandate, as a successor to the Financial Stability Forum (FSF), including all G20 countries, FSF members, Spain, and the European Commission;
• that the FSB should collaborate with the IMF to provide early warning of macroeconomic and financial risks and the actions needed to address them;
• to reshape our regulatory systems so that our authorities are able to identify and take account of macro-prudential risks;
• to extend regulation and oversight to all systemically important financial institutions, instruments and markets.  This will include, for the first time, systemically important hedge funds;
• to endorse and implement the FSF’s tough new principles on pay and compensation and to support sustainable compensation schemes and the corporate social responsibility of all firms;
• to take action, once recovery is assured, to improve the quality, quantity, and international consistency of capital in the banking system.  In future, regulation must prevent excessive leverage and require buffers of resources to be built up in good times;
• to take action against  non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens.  We  stand ready to deploy sanctions to protect our public finances and financial systems. The era of banking secrecy is over. We note that the OECD has today published a list of countries assessed by the Global Forum against the international standard for exchange of tax information;
• to call on the accounting standard setters to work urgently with supervisors and regulators to improve standards on valuation and provisioning and achieve a single set of high-quality global accounting standards; and
• to extend regulatory oversight and registration to Credit Rating Agencies to ensure they meet the international code of good practice, particularly to prevent unacceptable conflicts of interest.

16. We instruct our Finance Ministers to complete the implementation of these decisions in line with the timetable set out in the Action Plan.  We have asked the FSB and the IMF to monitor progress, working with the Financial Action Taskforce and other relevant bodies, and to provide a report to the next meeting of our Finance Ministers in Scotland in November.

Strengthening our global financial institutions

17. Emerging markets and developing countries, which have been the engine of recent world growth, are also now facing challenges which are adding to the current downturn in the global economy.  It is imperative for global confidence and economic recovery that capital continues to flow to them.  This will require a substantial strengthening of the international financial institutions, particularly the IMF. We have therefore agreed today to make available an additional $850 billion of resources through the global financial institutions to support growth in emerging market and developing countries by helping to finance counter-cyclical spending, bank recapitalisation, infrastructure, trade finance, balance of payments support, debt rollover, and social support.  To this end:

• we have agreed to increase the resources available to the IMF through immediate financing from members of $250 billion, subsequently incorporated into an expanded and more flexible New Arrangements to Borrow, increased by up to $500 billion, and to consider market borrowing if necessary; and
• we support a substantial increase in lending of at least $100 billion by the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), including to low income countries, and ensure that all MDBs, including have the appropriate capital.

18. It is essential that these resources can be used effectively and flexibly to support growth.  We welcome in this respect the progress made by the IMF with its new Flexible Credit Line (FCL) and its reformed lending and conditionality framework which will enable the IMF to ensure that its facilities address effectively the underlying causes of countries’ balance of payments financing needs, particularly the withdrawal of external capital flows to the banking and corporate sectors.  We support Mexico’s decision to seek an FCL arrangement.

19. We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250 billion into the world economy and increase global liquidity, and urgent ratification of the Fourth Amendment.

20. In order for our financial institutions to help manage the crisis and prevent future crises we must strengthen their longer term relevance, effectiveness and legitimacy. So alongside the significant increase in resources agreed today we are determined to reform and modernise the international financial institutions to ensure they can assist members and shareholders effectively in the new challenges they face.  We will reform their mandates, scope and governance to reflect changes in the world economy and the new challenges of globalisation, and that emerging and developing economies, including the poorest, must have greater voice and representation. This must be accompanied by action to increase the credibility and accountability of the institutions through better strategic oversight and decision making.  To this end:

• we commit to implementing the package of IMF quota and voice reforms agreed in April 2008 and call on the IMF to complete the next review of quotas by January 2011;
• we agree that, alongside this, consideration should be given to greater involvement of the Fund’s Governors in providing strategic direction to the IMF and increasing its accountability;
• we commit to implementing the World Bank reforms agreed in October 2008.  We look forward to further recommendations, at the next meetings, on voice and representation reforms on an accelerated timescale, to be agreed by the 2010 Spring Meetings;
• we agree that the heads and senior leadership of the international financial institutions should be appointed through an open, transparent, and merit-based selection process; and
• building on the current reviews of the IMF and World Bank we asked the Chairman, working with the G20 Finance Ministers, to consult widely in an inclusive process and report back to the next meeting with proposals for further reforms to improve the responsiveness and adaptability of the IFIs.

21. In addition to reforming our international financial institutions for the new challenges of globalisation we agreed on the desirability of a new global consensus on the key values and principles that will promote sustainable economic activity.  We support discussion on such a charter for sustainable economic activity with a view to further discussion at our next meeting.  We take note of the work started in other fora in this regard and look forward to further discussion of this charter for sustainable economic activity.

Resisting protectionism and promoting global trade and investment

22. World trade growth has underpinned rising prosperity for half a century.  But it is now falling for the first time in 25 years.  Falling demand is exacerbated by growing protectionist pressures and a withdrawal of trade credit.  Reinvigorating world trade and investment is essential for restoring global growth. We will not repeat the historic mistakes of protectionism of previous eras.  To this end:

• we reaffirm the commitment made in Washington: to refrain from raising new barriers to investment or to trade in goods and services, imposing new export restrictions, or implementing World Trade Organisation (WTO) inconsistent measures to stimulate exports.  In addition we will rectify promptly any such measures.  We extend this pledge to the end of 2010;
• we will minimise any negative impact on trade and investment of our domestic policy actions including fiscal policy and action in support of the financial sector.  We will not retreat into financial protectionism, particularly measures that constrain worldwide capital flows, especially to developing countries;
• we will notify promptly the WTO of any such measures and we call on the WTO, together with other international bodies, within their respective mandates, to monitor and report publicly on our adherence to these undertakings on a quarterly basis;
• we will take, at the same time, whatever steps we can to promote and facilitate trade and investment; and
• we will ensure availability of at least $250 billion over the next two years to support trade finance through our export credit and investment agencies and through the MDBs.  We also ask our regulators to make use of available flexibility in capital requirements for trade finance.

23. We remain committed to reaching an ambitious and balanced conclusion to the Doha Development Round, which is urgently needed.  This could boost the global economy by at least $150 billion per annum.  To achieve this we are committed to building on the progress already made, including with regard to modalities.

24. We will give renewed focus and political attention to this critical issue in the coming period and will use our continuing work and all international meetings that are relevant to drive progress.

Ensuring a fair and sustainable recovery for all

25. We are determined not only to restore growth but to lay the foundation for a fair and sustainable world economy. We recognise that the current crisis has a disproportionate impact on the vulnerable in the poorest countries and recognise our collective responsibility to mitigate the social impact of the crisis to minimise long-lasting damage to global potential.   To this end:

• we reaffirm our historic commitment to meeting the Millennium Development Goals and to achieving our respective ODA pledges, including commitments on Aid for Trade, debt relief, and the Gleneagles commitments, especially to sub-Saharan Africa;
• the actions and decisions we have taken today will provide $50 billion to support social protection, boost trade and safeguard development in low income countries, as part of the significant increase in crisis support for these and other developing countries and emerging markets;
• we are making available resources for social protection for the poorest countries, including through investing in long-term food security and through voluntary bilateral contributions to the World Bank’s Vulnerability Framework, including the Infrastructure Crisis Facility, and the Rapid Social Response Fund;
• we have committed, consistent with the new income model, that additional resources from agreed sales of IMF gold will be used, together with surplus income, to provide $6 billion additional concessional and flexible finance for the poorest countries over the next 2 to 3 years. We call on the IMF to come forward with concrete proposals at the Spring Meetings;
• we have agreed to review the flexibility of the Debt Sustainability Framework and call on the IMF and World Bank to report to the IMFC and Development Committee at the Annual Meetings; and
• we call on the UN, working with other global institutions, to establish an effective mechanism to monitor the impact of the crisis on the poorest and most vulnerable.

26. We recognise the human dimension to the crisis.  We commit to support those affected by the crisis by creating employment opportunities and through income support measures.   We will build a fair and family-friendly labour market for both women and men.  We therefore welcome the reports of the London Jobs Conference and the Rome Social Summit and the key principles they proposed.  We will support employment by stimulating growth, investing in education and training, and through active labour market policies, focusing on the most vulnerable.  We call upon the ILO, working with other relevant organisations, to assess the actions taken and those required for the future.

27. We agreed to make the best possible use of investment funded by fiscal stimulus programmes towards the goal of building a resilient, sustainable, and green recovery.  We will make the transition towards clean, innovative, resource efficient, low carbon technologies and infrastructure.  We encourage the MDBs to contribute fully to the achievement of this objective.  We will identify and work together on further measures to build sustainable economies.

28. We reaffirm our commitment to address the threat of irreversible climate change, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, and to reach agreement at the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Delivering our commitments

29. We have committed ourselves to work together with urgency and determination to translate these words into action. We agreed to meet again before the end of this year to review progress on our commitments.

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: The whole of the United Kingdom welcomes President Obama and the First Lady on your first official visit to our country. President Obama, you have given renewed hope not only to the citizens of the United States of America, but to all citizens in all part of the world. And I want to thank you for your leadership, your vision and your courage, which you’ve already shown in your presidency, and congratulate you on the dynamism, the energy and, indeed, the achievements that you have been responsible for.

Your first 70 days in office have changed America, and you’ve changed America’s relationship with the world. So I thank you for coming to our country and I hope you will enjoy your visit with us.

Today we are renewing our special relationship for new times. Ours is not an alliance of convenience; it is a partnership of purpose. It’s a partnership that at times of challenge is resilient and at times of change is constant.

President Obama and I are agreed about the significance of this week’s G20 meeting, that the world is coming together to act in the face of unprecedented global financial times. Our first duty is to those who are suffering most — the people anxious about their mortgages, their jobs and their family’s future. For them, the pain of recession is all too real. But let us not forget that in 1929, when the Wall Street crash happened and led to recession, it was not until 1945 that the world came together to reshape the world economy. Then it took more than 15 years.

Today, within months of this financial crisis, we are coming together to solve the common problems we face, we are cooperating to shorten the recession, and we are working together to protect and save jobs. The truth is that today’s global problems require global solutions. And at this week’s summit, where leaders representing 85 percent of the world’s economy are gathering together, this summit cannot simply agree to the lowest common denominator. We must stand united in our determination to do whatever is necessary.

This is an unprecedented financial crisis. People have lost their homes, their jobs, and in some cases, their hope. And President Obama and I are agreed today that the actions we take are global solutions required for global problems.

There are really five tests for the G20 summit, five tests for the world — tests that if met, will create a new consensus for the world. The speed and scale of global economic change has overwhelmed the national system of rules and regulations. So our first test is to agree tougher and more transparent supervision of banks, hedge funds, and what is known as the global shadow banking system. We are both agreed there will be no sustainable recovery until the banks are cleaned up and a new regulatory system is put in place.

The second test is to commit to taking the action necessary to bring about a resumption of growth, push back against the global recession, and support families and businesses.

The third test is to ensure, by international economic cooperation and by strengthening our international economic institutions, we support growth in emerging markets and developing countries.

The fourth test is to reject protectionism and kick-start global trade, and I suggest that an absolute minimum of $100 billion of trade finance that is so desperately needed.

Fifth, we have an obligation to help the poorest, those most vulnerable, but least able to respond to the crisis, by meeting our Millennium Development goals and keeping our pledges on aid.

Both the United Kingdom and the United States are also embarked on a transition to becoming low-carbon economies, because the President and I share the conviction that green energy technologies will be the major driver of our future economic growth and we can create millions of green-collar jobs in the world for the future.

Now, we have some tough negotiations ahead. It will not be easy. But I know from my talks this week, and from my discussions with President Obama today, that the world does want to come together; that Britain and America working together can help make this consensus not just something that is agreed on paper, but which truly delivers for people everywhere who are worried about their jobs and their hopes and their family budgets.

Today, we, the G20 leaders, will begin our discussions. Tomorrow, we must make decisions. And that is what we will do.

We’ve also discussed how we rebuild Afghanistan by complementing our military action with defense, diplomacy, and development — putting new resources into civilian support for the Afghan reconstruction.

The President and I also discussed our hopes that Iran will make the right choice and take advantage of the international community’s willingness to negotiate, and how we will renew our efforts to deliver security and peace for both the Palestinians and Israel.

Mr. President, I’m honored to be working with you so closely. We share a personal friendship. I believe we can continue to work together for the common good. I repeat: The whole of the United Kingdom is delighted and privileged that you’re with us today. Thank you.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you so much, Gordon.

Good morning. I am very pleased to be in London, especially with weather of the sort we’re seeing today. And I want to thank Prime Minister Brown for hosting us, for his wife taking Michelle on a tour of some wonderful projects around the city, for his leadership throughout this challenge. I have to say it’s not just Gordon and Sarah that have been very hospitable — I had a chance to see their two sons and we talked about dinosaurs a little bit — (laughter) — in between discussions of Afghanistan and Iran. So we’ve had a wonderful time.

And you’re to be congratulated because you have shown extraordinary energy and leadership and initiative in laying the groundwork for this summit. All of us owe Prime Minister Brown an extraordinary debt of gratitude for his preparations in what I believe will be a historic and essential meeting of the G20 nations.

Prime Minister Brown and I had a productive discussion this morning. Both of us greatly value the special relationship between our nations. The United States and the United Kingdom have stood together through thick and thin, through war and peace, through hard times and prosperity — and we’ve always emerged stronger by standing together. So I’m pleased that my first meeting overseas as President is with Gordon Brown, just as I was pleased to host him in Washington shortly after taking office. And I know that we both believe that the relationship between our two countries is more than just an alliance of interests; it’s a kinship of ideals and it must be constantly renewed.

In our meeting this morning we covered a complex and wide-ranging agenda. It begins, of course, with the global economy. All of us here in London have the responsibility to act with a sense of urgency, and I think that what Prime Minister Brown spoke about, the human dimensions of this crisis — people losing their homes, losing their businesses that they’ve worked so hard for, losing their health care in the United States; people around the world who were already desperate before the crisis and they find themselves even more desperate afterwards — that’s what our agenda has to begin with, and that’s where it will end.

All of us here in London have the responsibility to act with a sense of urgency, and every nation that will be participating has been affected by a crisis that has cost us so much in terms of jobs, savings and the economic security of our citizens. So make no mistake, we are facing the most severe economic crisis since World War II. And the global economy is now so fundamentally interconnected that we can only meet this challenge together. We can’t create jobs at home if we’re not doing our part to support strong and stable markets around the world.

The United States is committed, working alongside the United Kingdom, to doing whatever it takes to stimulate growth and demand, and to ensure that a crisis like this never happens again. At home, we’re moving forward aggressively on both recovery and reform. We’ve taken unprecedented action to create jobs and restore the flow of credit. And we’ve proposed a clear set of tough, new 21st-century rules of the road for all of our financial institutions. We are lifting ourselves out of this crisis and putting an end to the abuses that got us here.

I know that the G20 nations are appropriately pursuing their own approaches, and as Gordon indicated, we’re not going to agree on every point. I came here to put forward our ideas, but I also came here to listen, and not to lecture. Having said that, we must not miss an opportunity to lead. To confront a crisis that knows no borders, we have a responsibility to coordinate our actions and to focus on common ground, not on our occasional differences. If we do, I believe we can make enormous progress.

And that’s why, in preparation for these meetings, I’ve reached out and consulted with many of the leaders who are here or will be arriving shortly.

History shows us that when nations fail to cooperate, when they turn away from one another, when they turn inward, the price for our people only grows. That’s how the Great Depression deepened. That’s a mistake that we cannot afford to repeat.

So in the days ahead I believe we will move forward with a sense of common purpose. We have to do what’s necessary to restore growth and to pursue the reforms that can stabilize our financial system well into the future. We have to reject protectionism and accelerate our efforts to support emerging markets. And we have to put in place a structure that can sustain our cooperation in the months and years ahead.

The Prime Minister and I also covered several other areas of challenge that are fundamental to our common security and prosperity. As he mentioned, we discussed my administration’s review of strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a review that benefitted greatly from the consultations with our allies.

The city of London, like the United States, was attacked by the al Qaeda terrorists who are still plotting in Pakistan, and we are committed to a focused effort to defeat them. And I want to repeat something that I said during our last visit together — I want to honor the British troops and their families who are serving alongside our own on behalf of our common security.

We also discussed the progress that was made yesterday at The Hague, where more than 70 nations gathered to discuss our mutual responsibilities to partner with the Afghan people so that we can deny al Qaeda a safe haven. And in the days ahead we’ll consult further with our NATO allies about training Afghan security forces, increasing our civilian support, and a regional approach that recognizes the connection between the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And just a few other points. The Prime Minister and I share a common commitment to sustain diplomacy on behalf of a secure and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and Israel and the Arab world. And we’re working together to responsibly end the war in Iraq by transitioning to Iraqi responsibility. We’re both committed to diplomacy with Iran that offers the Islamic republic the opportunity of a better future if it abandons its nuclear weapons ambitions.

And finally, we discussed two of the other long-term challenges that will define our times, which I will be focused on throughout my trip in Europe — the need for global action to confront climate change and a renewed effort on behalf of nuclear nonproliferation, which I will be discussing later today with President Medvedev.

Our immediate task, however, is the critical work of confronting the economic crisis. As I’ve said, we’ve passed through an era of profound irresponsibility; now we cannot afford half-measures, and we cannot go back to the kind of risk-taking that leads to bubbles that inevitably bust.

So we have a choice: We can shape our future, or let events shape it for us. And if we want to succeed, we can’t fall back on the stale debates and old divides that won’t move us forward. Every single nation who’s here has a stake in the other. We won’t solve all our problems in the next few days, but we can make real and unprecedented progress. We have an obligation to keep it — keep working at it until the burden on ordinary people is lifted, until we’ve achieved the kind of steady growth that creates jobs and advances prosperity for people everywhere.

That’s the responsibility we bear; that must be the legacy of our cooperation. And I’m extraordinarily grateful to Gordon for his friendship and his leadership in mobilizing at a time of such significant moment.

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: Thank you very much. I said to Barack I was going to introduce him to my friends in the British media.

Nick.

Q Prime Minister, thank you very much, indeed. Nick Robinson, BBC News. A question for you both, if I may. The Prime Minister has repeatedly blamed the United States of America for causing this crisis. France and Germany blame both Britain and America for causing this crisis. Who is right? And isn’t the debate about that at the heart of the debate about what to do now?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I would say that if you look at the sources of this crisis, the United States certainly has some accounting to do with respect to a regulatory system that was inadequate to the massive changes that had taken place in the global financial system.

I think what is also true is that here in Great Britain, in continental Europe, around the world, we were seeing the same mismatch between the regulatory regimes that were in place and the highly integrated global capital markets that had emerged.

So at this point, I’m less interested in identifying blame than fixing the problem. And I think we’ve taken some very aggressive steps in the United States to do so — not just responding to the immediate crisis, ensuring that banks are adequately capitalized, dealing with the enormous drop-off in demand and the contraction that’s been taking place, but more importantly for the long term, making sure that we’ve got a set of regulations that are up to the task.

And that includes a number that will be discussed at this summit. I think there’s a lot of convergence between all the parties involved about the need, for example, to focus not on the legal form that a particular financial product takes or the institution that it emerges from, but rather what’s the risk involved; what’s the function of this product and how do we regulate that adequately; much more effective coordination between countries so that we can anticipate some of the risks that are involved; dealing with the problem of derivatives markets and making sure that we’ve set up systems that can reduce some of the risk there.

So I actually think that there’s enormous consensus that has emerged in terms of what we need to do now, and I’m a big believer in looking forward rather than backwards.

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: You know, I was in Brazil last week, and I think President Lula will forgive me for saying this — he said to me, when I was leader of the trade unions, I blamed the government; when I became leader of the opposition, I blamed the government; when I became the government, I blamed Europe and America. (Laughter.)

And he recognizes, as we do, that this is a global problem. It’s a global problem that requires a global solution. What essentially happened is that the speed and the pace and the scope of global financial changes — the mobility of capital around the world — overwhelmed system of national regulation. And if we don’t accept that as the problem that we’ve got to solve, then we will not solve the problems this week.

This is a problem to build cross-border supervision, to actually deal with the rules globally that can govern the financial supervision of banks and markets, and to root out the bad practices that have partly existed because of the scope by which — because of the speed by which financial markets moved and the scope that they had to cross national boundaries.

So we need global solutions to what is a global problem and I think we will agree a number of measures, as President Obama said, that will clean up the global financial system.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: And just one last point I want to make, because it’s relevant to this issue of responsibility versus blame. I had a professor when I was in law school who said some are to blame but all are responsible. And I think that’s the best way for us to approach the problem that we have right now.

I do think that, across borders, there has been a tendency to believe that whatever the global capital markets were doing was ultimately beneficial. I am a big believer in global capital markets and their potential to provide capital to countries that might not otherwise be able to grow, the possibilities of increasing living standards in ways that we have not seen previously in world history. But what we have to understand is, is that that’s going to require some sort of regulatory framework to make sure that it doesn’t jump the rails. And that I think is something that we’re going to be able to put together.

Jennifer Loven of AP. Where’s Jennifer — there you are.

Q Thank you, Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister. Mr. President, you come here with several signs of fairly broad challenges to American economic leadership. There’s the resistance to big, new stimulus spending; there’s talk of a global — new global currency; talk of even stricter regulations than are on the table now. How do you answer that? And what do you say to the talk that there’s a decline in the American model, American prominence?

And then to the Prime Minister, if I could. French President Sarkozy said he might walk out of the summit if the regulations that are on the table do not get more strict, say, on offshore tax havens and on risky financial products. Can you answer that?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I think if you pulled quotes from 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, from previous news reports, you might find similar contentions that America was on decline. And somehow it hasn’t worked out that way, because I think that there is a vibrancy to our economic model, a durability to our political model, and a set of ideals that has sustained us through even the most difficult times.

Now, with respect to the current crisis, I think that there is no doubt that at a time when the world is fearful, that there is a strong tendency to look for somebody to blame. And I think that given our prominence in the world financial system, it’s natural that questions are asked — some of them very legitimate — about how we have participated in global financial markets.

Having said that, I am absolutely confident that this meeting will reflect enormous consensus about the need to work in concert to deal with these problems. I think that the separation between the various parties involved has been vastly overstated. If you look at where there has been the biggest debate, and I think that the press has fastened on this as a ongoing narrative — this whole issue of fiscal stimulus. And the fact of the matter is, is that almost every country that’s participating in this summit has engaged in fiscal stimulus. The ones that are perceived as being resistant to fiscal stimulus have done significant fiscal stimulus. There has not been a dispute about the need for government to act in the face of a rapidly contracting set of markets and very high unemployment.

Now, there have been differences in terms of how should that stimulus be shaped. There have been arguments, for example, among some European countries that because they have more of a social safety net, that some of the countercyclical measures that we took — for example, unemployment insurance — were less necessary for them to take. But the truth is, is that that’s — that’s just arguing at the margins. The core notion that government has to take some steps to deal with a contracting global marketplace and that we should be promoting growth, that’s not in dispute.

On the regulatory side, this notion that somehow there are those who are pushing for regulation and those who are resisting regulation is belied by the facts. Tim Geithner, who’s sitting here today, went before Congress and proposed as aggressive a set of regulatory measures as any that have emerged among G20 members. That was before we showed up.

And in conversations that Gordon and I had with our teams, I think there’s great symmetry in our belief that even as we deal with the current crisis, we’ve got to make sure that we’re preventing future crises like this from happening again.

On the topic of emerging markets and making sure that they have the finances that they need to weather the storm, poor countries are getting help and they’re not being lost in the shuffle, there is complete concurrence.

So I know that when you’ve got a bunch of heads of state talking, it’s not visually that interesting — (laughter) — and it — you know, the communiqués are written in sort of dry language, and so there’s a great desire to inject some conflict and some drama into the occasion. But the truth of the matter is, is that I think there has been an extraordinary convergence and I’m absolutely confident that the United States, as — as a peer of these other countries, will help to lead us through this very difficult time.

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: Let me also add that I’m confident that President Sarkozy will not only be here for the first course of our dinner, but will still be sitting as we complete our dinner this evening.

And I think, as President Obama has said, look, never before has the world come together in this way to deal with an economic crisis. Any of the crises that we’ve seen since the second world war, you have not had this level of international cooperation. And never before have the world come together with so many countries represented from so many different continents to address this crisis. So we have China, we have India, we have Argentina, Brazil, we have South Africa, we have Russia, as well as Europe and America and Japan.

And we are within a few hours I think of agreeing a global plan for economic recovery and reform. And I think the significance of this is that we’re looking at every aspect. It is American leadership on reshaping the financial system, on recapitalizing the banks, on restructuring the banking system that will inform our discussions on the future of the financial system. So I praise President Obama for the work that has been done within only a few days of coming into office.

But we will also be discussing how we can help the emerging markets and the industrializing countries, how they can be protected against the financial storm that is facing them. We will not forget that we have obligations to the poorest countries in the world, as well.

And so the significance of this is not just that everybody is coming together, but in all those different dimensions of the economic activity of the world, how we can restructure the financial system, how we can get growth back and create jobs in the world, how we can rebuild our financial institutions for the future, how we can help the poorest countries of the world, how we can move forward on low-carbon recovery — you’re going to see action.

And of course it’s difficult, of course it’s complex — you have a large number of countries. But I’m very confident that people not only want to work together, but we agree a common global plan for recovery and reform.

Tom.

Q Tom Bradby, ITV News. Mr. President, I hear what you say, but you’ve committed a vast sum of your country’s money to a huge fiscal stimulus and we had the clear impression that you wanted other countries to come in behind you a bit more strongly. It appears that — we’ve been told by the Governor of the Bank of England we can’t do more for the moment, and the French and the Germans won’t. Are you disappointed by that? And are you actually still calling on other countries to go further?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, as I said before, I think that there is broad recognition that in the midst of the worst crisis we’ve seen since the ’30s, that governments are going to have to act. And certainly the United States does not intend to act alone — and we’re not. Great Britain has taken serious steps. The European Union has taken serious steps. Australia, Canada, Japan, China have all initiated significant stimulus packages.

And I think that our goal is simply to make certain that each country, taking into account its differences in economic circumstances, as well as political culture, is doing what is necessary to promote economic growth.

The United States will do its share, but I think that one of the things that Gordon and I spoke about is the fact that in some ways the world has become accustomed to the United States being a voracious consumer market and the engine that drives a lot of economic growth worldwide. And I think that in the wake of this crisis, even as we’re doing stimulus we have to take into account our own deficits. We’re going to have to take into account a whole host of factors that can increase our savings rate and start dealing with our long-term fiscal position, as well as our current account deficits.

Those are all issues that we have to deal with internally, which means that if there’s going to be renewed growth, it can’t just be the United States as the engine. Everybody is going to have to pick up the pace. And I think that there’s a recognition, based on the conversations that I’ve had with leaders around the world, that that is important.

I should add, by the way, that to the extent that all countries are participating in promoting growth, that also strengthens the arguments that we can make in our respective countries about the importance of world trade — the sense that this isn’t a situation where each country is only exporting and never importing, but rather that there’s a balance in how we approach these issues. And, again, I’ve actually been pleased with the degree to which there’s common agreement on that front.

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: Tom, if you were asking this question in a situation where America had done a fiscal stimulus and no one other country except Britain had followed it, then your question would have some legitimacy. But, look, what has happened around the world in the last few months is country after country have contributed to the biggest fiscal stimulus, the biggest injection of resources, the biggest amount of new investment provided by governments into the world economy in the history of the world. And we are in the midst of the biggest fiscal boost that the world economy has ever had.

And so Germany has invested $80 billion; France invested $25 billion; we’ve invested; other countries in the European have invested. Different countries have their different times for announcing their decisions. Some will do it in their budget, some will do it be financial statement. The combination of all of this, as you will see when you get our communiqué tomorrow, is the most substantial fiscal stimulus, something on the order of $2 trillion — indeed, more than that. And that is the world coming together to cut interest rates, the world coming together to give a boost to the economy, and of course, the world coming together to deal with the other problem, which is restructuring our financial systems for the future.

And I think it is remarkable that things that people could not have thought possible 10 years ago, even 5 years ago, that you have this coordinated action from all the countries. It is remarkable this is happening. Of course, we want to push it forward tomorrow, and I believe we will.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Where’s Caren? There you are. Hi, Caren.

Q Thank you, Mr. President, Prime Minister. You mentioned that you will be meeting later with Russian President Medvedev. What are your aims for that meeting? And could you elaborate on this idea of resetting U.S.-Russian relations? And also, does that mean, as Russia hopes, that you’re willing to give ground on issues like missile defense and NATO expansion?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, this will be the first time that I’m meeting with President Medvedev. I’m very much looking forward to the meeting. We’ve had a series of conversations on the telephone and exchanged letters.

As I spoke about during the campaign, as Secretary of State Clinton has amplified in some of her remarks and her meetings with top Russian officials, what we’ve seen over the last several years is drift in the U.S.-Russian relationship. There are very real differences between the United States and Russia, and I have no interest in papering those over. But there are also a broad set of common interests that we can pursue. Both countries, I believe, have an interest in reducing nuclear stockpiles and promoting nuclear nonproliferation. Both countries have an interest in reducing the threat of terrorism. Both countries have an interest in stabilizing the world economy. Both countries have an interest in finding a sustainable path for energy and dealing with some of the threats of climate change that we’ve discussed.

So, on a whole range of issues, from Afghanistan to Iran to the topics that will be consuming most of our time here at the G20, I think there’s great potential for concerted action. And that’s what we will be pursuing.

Now, as has I think been noted in the press, a good place to start is the issue of nuclear proliferation. And one of the things that I’ve always believed strongly is that both the United States and Russia and other nuclear powers will be in a much stronger position to strengthen what has become a somewhat fragile, threadbare nonproliferation treaty if we are leading by example and if we can take serious steps to reduce the nuclear arsenal.

I think people on both sides of the Atlantic understand that as much as the constant cloud, the threat of nuclear warfare has receded since the Cold War, that the presence of these deadly weapons, their proliferation, the possibility of them finding their way into the hands of terrorists, continues to be the gravest threat to humanity. What better project to start off than seeing if we can make progress on that front. I think we can.

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: Adam.

Q Both of you today have conjured the alarming specter of the Great Depression, but let’s take your most optimistic hopes for this summit. Assuming you’re successful, I suspect what millions of people around the world want to know is how much worse is this going to get and how long is it going to last and when is it going to end and growth return.

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: It will get worse if people do not act. The option of doing nothing is not available to us. And I think we’ve seen from past crises, both internationally and in regions of the world, that if people fail to take the decisive action at the beginning, then you risk a longer recession; you risk more businesses being lost, you risk more jobs lost.

So, of course, these are difficult decisions because governments are moving in where markets have failed and banks have collapsed. But to take these decisions is the right course for the world economy.

Now, I believe that the degree of international cooperation that we can get will determine how quickly all our economies can recover. If there is stimulus in one country and it’s repeated in another country, and repeated in other countries, then you can magnify the effect of that stimulus round the world, both for the benefit of the individual country that’s making it and for the rest of the world. And if you can see the coordinated cuts in interest rates coming together, then you’ve got to push for recovery and for new economic activity. And if you can see the banks, which operate internationally, being cleaned up in every country, then you have a situation where the world will feel confident and there will be trust in the banking system for people to resume saving, investing, and preparing for the future.

So I believe the level of international cooperation will be one of the major factors that will determine how quickly we can recover. But what we are determined to do is, in this difficult time, protect people in their jobs, make sure that we can get money to mortgage holders and to businesses, and of course make sure that countries that are in peril at the moment, who don’t have their own resources and aren’t able to restructure their banking systems, are given resources from the world to enable them to do so.

So the way forward is not to do nothing. The way forward is to take the action that’s necessary.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I agree with everything that Gordon said. It’s been said repeatedly that every financial crisis comes to an end. So it will come to an end at some point. The question is, what have been the costs and how long the downturn.

I think people should take heart from the fact that governments have learned lessons from the ’30s, central banks have learned lessons from the ’30s. There has been much swifter action, much bolder action, much more coordinated action even prior to this summit than we have seen in previous financial crises. And that means that the prospect of restoring world growth and trade are that much greater.

I do think that Gordon is absolutely right — how well we execute it in the months to come, how well we button down these regulations, how well we each in our own respective countries help banks to deal with the impaired assets that they have on their books so that they can start lending again to businesses and consumers, how effective we are in managing the huge outflows of capital from emerging markets and provide a buffer for very poor and developing countries that are seeing huge contractions in their trade and just don’t have a lot of margin for error, how well we reform our international financial institutions so that they can be a more effective player in this whole process — all those things will help determine whether this ends up being a slow-rolling crisis that takes a lot more time to cure, or whether we start seeing significant recovery.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that 2009 is going to be difficult, and, again, when you put a human face on this crisis, the way people experience it most immediately is losing their job, losing their home, losing their savings, losing their pensions. And what I think each of us is committed to doing is to make sure that people are getting immediate help, even as we’re solving these broader structural problems, because we don’t want that kind of suffering, but it’s also not good for the overall health of the economic system.

And that’s part of where stimulus has been very helpful. I mean, in our country, the unemployment insurance, the food stamps, the other mechanisms that have put money directly into people’s pockets, that’s not just good for those individual families; it’s also helped to lift consumer spending, or at least stabilize consumer spending in a way that will promise better growth in the future.

Hans Nichols.

Q Thank you, Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister. Mr. President, you just spoke about looking forward and not backward, and you also referenced the voracious appetite of the American consumer. What role should the European and American consumer then play in the quarter that starts today? Should they be spending or saving to alter the velocity of what you just called a slow-rolling crisis?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I think that each family has got to look at its circumstances and make those determinations. Obviously, there are a lot of people who are concerned about their job security, or they’re concerned about seeing their savings having diminished if they were in the stock market, and I think it’s an understandable response to be somewhat cautious in the midst of this kind of uncertainty.

I think the best advice I would have would be to say that despite the current hardships, we are going to get through this, and so you should plan sensibly, in anticipation that this economy is going to recover and new — young families are going to want to buy new homes, and sooner or later that clunker of a car is going to wear out and people are going to want to buy a new car. And so that basing decisions around fear is — is not the right way to go.

We are going to get through this difficult time. And I think it is sometimes important to step back and just have some perspective about the differences between now and the Great Depression, when there were no social safety nets in place; when unemployment was 25 or 30 percent. This is a difficult time, but it’s not what happened to our grandparents’ generation.

And so I would ask people to be confident about their own futures. And that may mean, in some cases, spending now as investments for the future. There’s been a debate back home about our budget: In the midst of this crisis, should we deal with health care? Should we deal with energy? Should we deal with education? And one of the analogies I’ve used is a family who is having a difficult time — and I actually get letters like this occasionally from voters — one of our parents has lost their job, savings have declined, and so I’m wrestling with whether or not I should go to college because that will require me taking out a lot of debt, and maybe it would be more responsible for me to go find any job that I can to help the family.

And, you know, when I write back to those families or those individuals I say, well, you’ve obviously got to make these decisions yourself, but don’t shortchange the future because of fear in the present. That I think is the most important message that we can send not just in the United States but around the world.

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: Barack is absolutely right. Surely the most important thing is that people, by the decisions that are made, can have confidence in the future — confidence to be able to make decisions about whether to save or to spend. And all the measures that we are taking — restructuring the banks, putting money into the economy, the public works, and of course the low-carbon activities that we’re encouraging as well — are designed to give people the confidence that their savings are safe, that we’ve sorted out the problems and are sorting out the problems in the banking system, that we have put resources into economic activity in the economy so that jobs can be solved and jobs can be created. And then people, as consumers, can make their own decisions about what they want to do.

And I think that’s the key to the future, that people can see that the problems are being addressed and they, themselves, can have the confidence either to save or to spend or to invest — have confidence in the future. And I believe that we can make a big step towards creating that confidence by some of the decisions that we can make together.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: All right?

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: George. Fine.

Q Thank you. George Pascoe-Watson from The Sun. Mr. President, as President you won with a landslide. Have you got any advice for Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister? (Laughter.) Secondly, what are your things you like most about Great Britain and London? And lastly, England are playing in a World Cup qualifying match in soccer, a game you love. Have you got any good — good luck message for the England team tonight?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well — (laughter) — let me take all these in turn. I have had enough trouble back home picking my brackets for the college basketball tournament that’s taking place there — called March Madness — stirred up all kinds of controversy. The last thing I’m going to do is wade into European football. (Laughter.) That would be a mistake. I didn’t get a briefing on that, but I sense that would be a mistake. (Laughter.)

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: England will win I can tell you.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: So that would be point number one.

The thing I love about Great Britain is its people, and there is just a extraordinary affinity and kinship that we have. We owe so much to England; that when you come here there’s that sense of familiarity, as well as difference, that makes it just a special place.

I have — the only advice I would give Gordon Brown is the same advice that I gave myself during the campaign and that I’ve been giving myself over the last three months, which is over time good policy is good politics. And if every day you are waking up and you are making the very best decisions that you can, despite the fact that sometimes the cards in your hand aren’t very good and the options are narrow and the choices are tough, and you are assured to be second-guessed constantly, and that occasionally you’re going to make mistakes — but if every day you’re waking up saying, how can I make the best possible decisions to create jobs, help young people imagine a better future, provide care to the sick or the elderly or the vulnerable, sustain the planet — if those are the questions that you’re asking yourself, then I think you end up doing pretty good.

And the best part is you can wake up and look at yourself in the mirror. And that I think is the kind of integrity that Gordon Brown has shown in the past and will continue to show in the future.

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: It’s been an extraordinary visit already and I’ve benefitted from Barack’s advice not just about elections, but about fitness — we’ve been talking about not the — (laughter) — not the treadmill of politics, but the treadmill that we’re both on every day, the running machines, and how you can manage to do that when you’re traveling around the world and going to different countries, and we’ve been exchanging ideas.

Can I also say it’s an extraordinary privilege to have Secretary of State Clinton here and Secretary of State Geithner [sic] and we wish them well in everything that they do as well.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: And we thank the entire team. As I said, everybody has worked extraordinarily hard to make this successful. We are very grateful for the hospitality. There’s one last thing that I should mention that I love about Great Britain, and that is the Queen. And so I’m very much looking forward to — (laughter) — I’m very much looking forward to meeting her for the first time later this evening. And as you might imagine, Michelle has been really thinking that through — (laughter) — because I think in the imagination of people throughout America, I think what the Queen stands for and her decency and her civility, what she represents, that’s very important.

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: Well, I know the Queen is looking forward to welcoming you and she’s very much looking forward to her discussion with you.

So, thank you very much.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you.

END
11:05 A.M. (Local

Winfield House
London, United Kingdom
1:01 P.M. (Local)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Let me just make a brief comment. I am very grateful to President Medvedev for taking the time to visit with me today. I’m particularly gratified because prior to the meeting our respective teams had worked together and had developed a series of approaches to areas of common interest that I think present great promise.

As I’ve said in the past, I think that over the last several years the relationship between our two countries has been allowed to drift. And what I believe we’ve begun today is a very constructive dialogue that will allow us to work on issues of mutual interest, like the reduction of nuclear weapons and the strengthening of our nonproliferation treaties; our mutual interest in dealing with terrorism and extremism that threatens both countries; our mutual interest in economic stability and restoring growth around the world; our mutual interest in promoting peace and stability in areas like the Middle East.

So I am very encouraged by the leadership of the President. I’m very grateful that he has taken the time to visit. I am especially excited about the fact that the President extended an invitation for me to visit Moscow to build on some of the areas that we discussed on today. And I have agreed to visit Moscow in July, which we both agreed was a better time than January to visit.

And my hope is that given the constructive conversations that we’ve had today, the joint statements that we will be issuing both on reductions of nuclear arsenals, as well as a range of other areas of interest, that what we’re seeing today is the beginning of new progress in the U.S.-Russian relations. And I think that President Medvedev’s leadership is — has been critical in allowing that progress to take place.

So thank you very much.

PRESIDENT MEDVEDEV: (As translated.) I would like to sincerely thank President Obama for this opportunity to meet him and to meet this time in person. And, indeed, we had an opportunity to compare our views on the current relations and current situation in the world. And we had an opportunity to agree upon certain common values that we need to foster in our relations, and provide for further areas for cooperation in progression of our relations.

I can only agree that the relations between our countries have been adrift over the past years. As President Obama has said, they were drifting, and drifting in some wrong directions. They were degrading, to some extent.

That is why we believe that since such a situation was not to the benefit of the United States or Russia Federation, to say nothing about the global situation, we believe that the time has come to reset our relations, as it was said, and to open a new page in progression in the development of our common situation.

Indeed, it was said that we are prepared to cooperate further in such areas as the nonproliferation of WMDs limitation of strategic weapons, countering terrorism, and improving economic and financial situation and the overall economic situation in the world.

It is important to note that there are many points on which we can work. And indeed there are far more points in which we can — where we can come closer, where we can work, rather than those points on which we have differences. Thus, by bringing our positions closer we can attain significant progress and, much more importantly, further our achievements.

I share the view of President Obama who said that our teams have worked really well in preparation of this meeting, and the declarations, the two declarations, which we are adopting are just another proof of that. And those are a declaration on the strategic weapons, and the declaration on the general framework of relations between Russia and the United States, which set good grounds for our further interaction.

We will be very glad to host President Obama, to greet him in Moscow in July. Indeed, July is the warmest time in Russia and in Moscow, and I believe that will be exactly the feature of the talks and relations we are going to enjoy during that period in Moscow. And of course we have set out certain objectives and certain goals and tasks we need to work through in order to get better prepared for this meeting. And indeed I am convinced that is a good opportunity for this interaction.

Well, indeed, so we are convinced that we’ll continue successfully our contacts, in particular today, where we were not only discussing international issues or bilateral items of interaction; we were also discussing education, which probably not everybody — where we have come to an understanding that we’re reading the same textbooks while in these subjects. And this will set us further for interaction.

After this meeting, I am far more optimistic about the successful development of our relations, and would like to thank President Obama for this opportunity.
END
1:14 P.M. (Local)

At 11 a.m. EDT here in the U.S., the top story on the front page was headed: World ‘a few hours’ from global plan for economic recovery and reform.  That’s a big statement.  It’s like, get all these powerwigs together and poof, crisis over.

Well, it’s what U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said earlier today in a news conference with President Barack Obama:

Mr Brown said the ‘first duty’ of the world leaders gathering in London was to the ordinary people suffering as a result of the global economic crisis and anxious about their jobs, their mortgages and their futures.

‘We are within a few hours, I think, of agreeing a global plan for economic recovery and reform and I think the significance of this is that we are looking at every aspect,’ he said.

I’m looking forward to today’s later presser – the one with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.  Merkel spent the weekend telling anyone who would listen that there’s too much spending going on, while Sarkozy has taken to blaming the whole economic mess on the “Anglo-Saxons.”

I think things boil down to this on the eve of the Summit.  Brown and Obama want more worldwide stimulus and cooperation on regulatory reform for the financial system.  Merkel and Sarkozy are off tilting at windmills talking about ‘offshore tax havens’ and hedge funds – neither of which have anything to do with the root cause of the worldwide slump.

Perhaps Brown knows something the rest of us don’t, something that will be revealed “within a few hours.”

With Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister of Australia, I come here to St Paul’s, a church of enormous beauty and monumental history, a place of sanctuary which amidst the passing storms of time has always been a rock of faith at the centre of our national life. St Paul’s is a place to which over the centuries people have come in hope and faith – a great national institution standing between Westminster and the City, midway on the horizon between the world of politics and the world of finance, and with a lot to teach both.

So just as i came here to speak in this cathedral before Gleneagles in 2005, I believe there is no more appropriate place to talk with you about the G20 summit which opens in London tomorrow. And let me say there is no more appropriate leader to join us in this discussion than Kevin Rudd, a Prime Minister of high courage, a leader of great conscience and a visionary for reform.

And today he and I want to discuss with you not the details of specific or technical financial programmes or policies, but instead enduring values – indeed the enduring virtues – that we have inherited from the past which must infuse our ideals and hopes for the future.

And I want to suggest to you today that this most modern of crises, the first financial crisis of the global age, has confirmed the enduring importance of the most timeless of truths – that our financial system must be founded on the very same values that are at the heart of our family lives, neighbourhoods and communities.

Instead of a globalisation that threatens to become values-free and rules-free, we need a world of shared global rules founded on shared global values. I know it’s hard to talk about the future when you’re having a tough time in the present. You don’t redesign a boat in the midst of a storm.

But we need to talk about the future – because it falls to us to shape it. When Dr Martin Luther King talked about the fierce urgency of now, he asked us to awaken to a ttde in the affairs of men which if missed means you can end up being literally too late forhistory.

It is usually only in hindsight that people can interpret the forces which have so transformed their lives – only in the classrooms of the future that the people of a country can stand back to identify and analyse the great turning points in their national story.

But we do not need the benefit of hindsight to know that the sheer scale, scope and speed of today’s global change throws up problems which, if we do not address them, will condemn millions around the world to a life that is unsustainable, insecure and unfair.

There are four great global challenges our generation must address urgently financial instability in a world of global capital flows, environmental degradation in a world of changing energy need, violent extremism in a world of mass communications and increased mobility, and extreme poverty in a world of growing inequalities.

Answering these questions will determine whether people have continued faith in globalisation, in multilateralism and in modernity itself. And what these challenges have in common is that none of them can be addressed by one country or one continent acting alone. None of them can be met and mastered without the world coming together. And none of them can be solved without agreed global rules informed by shared global values.

The oil price crisis last year, the financial crisis this year, and a climate change crisis every year, all mean that we are not at a moment of change we are in a world of change. Twenty years ago only one billion people were part of the world’s industrial economy – but now 4 billion are. For centuries people rarely moved even from their home town, now every single year 200 million people – the equivalent of the whole populations of Britain, Germany and France – move from their country of birth – and next year another 200 million will do so again.

In one decade the majority of the world’s manufacturing, for two centuries focussed in Europe and America, has shifted to Asia. The global sourcing of goods and services means we now depend so much on each other that what happens anywhere can have an impact on what happens everywhere.

And today this raises anxieties and questions for people about what will happen to them, and what it means for their dream that their children, the children who are the next generation, will do better than the children of the last. I recognise that for too many families anxious about jobs, worried about the mortgage, uncertain about their future, the most important financial summits are those that take place around their kitchen table.

And so I understand that people feel unsettled, and that the pain of this current recession is all too real. And the danger is that in every country workforces will become so worried that they try to pull up the drawbridge and turn the clock back, and will retreat into a dangerous protectionism that in the end protects no one. If people’s fears are not addressed, they may choose to walk away from the benefits the opening up of the world can bring.

But managed well, the same global economy that has brought so much global insecurity can also bring global opportunity. Over the next two decades billions of people in emerging markets will move from being simply producers of their goods to consumers of our goods, leading the world economy to double in size with twice as many opportunities for our businesses and twice as many middle class jobs and incomes across the world.

That is why I am an avowed supporter of open markets, free trade, private capital and a flexible, inclusive and sustainable globalisation.

But let us be honest – the globalisation which has done so much to improve choice and driven down the cost of everything form clothes to computers, and which has lifted millions out of poverty, has also unleashed forces that have totally overwhelmed the old national rules and systems of financial oversight.

And as I have always said I take full responsibility for all of my actions.

But I also know that this crisis is global in source and global in scope. We’ve seen worldwide changes happen so fast that they have outpaced people’s understanding of them – so that managers sitting in boardrooms were selling financial products they didn’t know the value of, to traders and investors who didn’t know what they were trading and investing in, covered by insurers who didn’t know what they were insuring. Complex products like derivatives and securitised loans which were supposed to disperse risk around the world instead spread contagion.

And the sensible limits to markets agreed in one country became undermined by global competition between all countries as each raced to the bottom. Instead of banks being, as they should be, stewards of people’s money, some of them became speculators with people’s futures.

I say to you plainly the world of the old Washington Consensus is over, and what comes in its place is up to us Instead of a global free market threatening to descend into a global free for all, we must reshape our global economic system so that it respects the values we celebrate in our everyday lives.

For I believe that the unsupervised globalisation of our financial markets did not only cross national boundaries – it crossed moral boundaries too. In our families we raise our children to work hard and to do their best and do their bit We don’t reward them for taking irresponsible risks that would put them or others in danger, and we don’t encourage them to seek short-term gratification at the expense of long term success.

And in Britain’s small businesses, managers and owners are the enterprising people our country depends on and we rightly celebrate. But they do not tram their teams to invest recklessly, behave secretively or keep their biggest gambles off the books.

Most people who have worked hard to build up their firm or shop understand responsible risk taking but don’t understand why any company would give rewards for failure, or how some people have grown fabulously wealthy making failed bets with other people’s money. So it is absurd for those on the extremes to blame the private sector for our problems – what we actually need is the practice of most of our private sector to be adopted by all of our private sector.

And so our task today is to bring our financial markets into closer alignment with the values held by families and business-people across our country. Yesterday I said there were five tests for the G20, and the first of these is to clean up the global banking system.

Most people want a market that is free, but never values-free, a society that is fair but not laissez faire. And so across the world our task is to agree global economic rules that reflect our enduring values.

That means rules that make transparent the risks that banks take, rules that bring hedge funds and shadow banking inside the regulatory net, rules that force banks to hold sufficient capital and ensure their liquidity, rules that require boards who understand their business and take responsibility for the decisions they take, and systems of pay and bonuses that reward people for long term value and not short term risk taking.

Let me put markets in context they can create an unrivalled widening of choice and chances, harnessing self-interest to produce results transcending self-interest. When they work well they fulfil the promise of Adam Smith that individual gain leads to collective gain, that even when people are pursuing their private wishes they can nonetheless deliver public good.

But as we are discovering to our considerable cost, the problem is that without transparent rules to guide them, free markets can reduce all relationships to transactions, all motivations to self interest, all sense of value to consumer choices, all sense of worth to a price tag So unbridled and untrammeled, they can become the enemy of the good society.

And we can now see that markets cannot self regulate but they can self destruct and, again if unbridled and untrammeled, they can become not just the enemy of the good society, but the enemy of the good economy too. Markets are in the public interest but not synonymous with it.

And the truth is that the virtues we admire most and make society flourish – hard work, taking responsibility, being honest, being fair – these are not values that spring from the market, they are the values we bring to it. They don’t come from market forces they come from the heart, and they are the values nurtured in families and in schools, in our shared institutions and our neighbourhoods.

So markets depend upon that which they do not create – they presuppose a well of values and work at their best when these values are upheld. And that is why what I argued controversially some time ago is now in my view more generally agreed, that there are limits to markets just as there are limits to states.

Just as in the 1970s and 80s people felt government was too powerful in the grip of vested interests that had to be channelled to work in the public interest, so too it is now clear that financial markets can become too powerful and come to be dominated by vested interests of their own. And so it falls to us, supporters of free markets, to save free markets from the most dogmatic of free marketeers.

To say this is not anti-business, anti-private sector or anti-market. Quite the contrary – my point is that strong rules rooted in shared values are the best way to serve both ourselves and our market system. Markets need morals.

The reason I have long been fascinated by Adam Smith who came from my home town Kirkcaldy is that he recognised that the invisible hand of the market had to be underpinned by the helping hand of society, that he argued the flourishing of moral sentiments is the foundation of the wealth of nations.

So the challenge for our generation is whether or not we can formulate global rules for our financial and economic systems that are grounded in our shared values.

Now that people can communicate instantaneously across borders, cultures and faiths, I believe we can be confident that across the world we are discovering that there is a shared moral sense. It is a sense strong enough to ensure the constant replenishment of that well of values on which we depend and which must infuse our shared rules.

And when people ask can there be a shared global ethics that will lie behind global rules, I answer that through each of our heritages, our traditions and faiths, there runs a single powerful moral sense demanding responsibility from all and fairness to all.

Christians do not say that people shoufd be reduced merely to what they can produce or what they can buy – that we should let the weak go under and only the strong survive. No, we say do to others what you would have them do unto you.

And when Judaism says love your neighbour as yourself. When Muslims say no one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. When Buddhists say hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. When Sikhs say treat others as you would be treated yourself. When Hindus say the sum of duty is do not unto others which would cause pain if done to you, they each and all reflect a sense that we all share the pain of others, and a sense that we believe in something bigger than ourselves – that we cannot be truly content while others face despair, cannot be completely at ease while others live in fear, cannot be satisfied while others are in sorrow We all feel, regardless of the source of our philosophy, the same deep moral sense that each of us is our brother and sisters’ keeper.

Call it as Adam Smith did the moral sentiment, as Lincoln did the better angels of our nature call it, as Winstanley did the light in man, call it duty or simply conscience – it means we cannot and will not pass by on the other side when people are suffering and we have it within our power to help.

So I believe that we have a responsibility to ensure that both markets and governments serve the public interest, and to recognise that the poor are our shared responsibility and that wealth carries unique responsibilities too.

I know that there is one analysis which says we must seize the opportunity of this crisis to reject materialism in all its forms. But for me, the answer doesn’t he in asking people to foreswear material things or giving up on aspiration for their futures, but instead in remembering what our pursuit of growth and prosperity was really all about, spreading freedom so that ever more people can live the lives they choose.

But it is no repudiation of wealth to say wealth should help more than the wealthy, no criticism of prosperity to say our first duty is to those without it, no attack on the life-long attachment I have had to aspiration to say each of us has a responsibility to ensure no-one is left behind.

Today we must reaffirm the age old truths about society that when those with riches help those without, it enriches us all, and the truth when the strong help the weak it makes us all stronger. But our meeting is only the start and world leaders only one part. I am still humbled by the memory of one of the protestor’s signs I saw at the make poverty history rally in Edinburgh in 2005 It said “you are G8 we are 6 billion”.

The campaigning groups, faith communities, companies, social enterprises and trade unions represented here today rightly demand a lot of us as leaders in coming days, but you too are part of the solution. And I believe religious leaders, business leaders and leaders of the financial sector, charities and unions and teachers at our universities and schools must
begin a conversation, a national debate, as serious as any we have entered in to in my lifetime, about the shape of the economy we are about to rebuild.

Let me conclude – the battle the leaders of the G20 are fighting this week is not the old one against old enemies – but a new one, against global recession, against climate chaos , and against unemployment, insecurity poverty and hopelessness.

And leaders meeting in London must supply the oxygen of confidence to today’s global economy and give people in all of our countries renewed hope for the future.

Our first test is that we must clean up our banking systems, curb the use of tax havens and introduce principles for pay and bonuses so that instead of banks serving themselves they serve the people.

Our second test is that we must take the action necessary to prevent the suffering of the past in mass long-term unemployment and save and create more than 20 million jobs.

Third, by international economic cooperation we must reshape the global financial system for new times so that with early warning and precautionary action we can prevent crises like this happening again.

Fourth, we must avoid the mistakes of the 1930s and not descend into protectionism and isolationism.

And fifth, we must press ahead with the low-carbon revolution.

And we must never, ever forget our obligations to the poor. Just yesterday I received a letter from the Holy Father, Pope Benedict, reminding us that “positive faith in the human person, and above all faith in the poorest men and women – of Africa and other regions of the world affected by extreme poverty – is what is needed if we are truly to come through the crisis”.

And so today I speak for all the leaders of the G20 when I say the duty of leadership is to identify, name and then help shape the changes of this new global age in the interests of people and so we completely reject the idea that the only thing we can do in the face of a recession is to let it run its course and do nothing, as if the economy operates according to iron laws and the only role of men and women is to live by what these laws dictate.

That is to demean our humanity – because there are always options, always choices, always solutions that human ingenuity can summon. A few years ago when economists were pressing the most dogmatic of free market policies on poorer countries, they argued for it by saying “Tina” – short for there is no alternative.

But African campaigners came up with a shorthand of their own “Themba” – short for there must be an alternative. In that cry – Themba – we hear everything that must guide us today because while it was an acronym – it was also the Zulu word for the most important thing that humans can have.

Hope.

Themba – the confidence, conviction and certainty that where there are problems there are always solutions, and we do not need to accept the defeatism of doing nothing.

The conviction that through pursuing cooperation and internationalism we need never return to the isolation and protectionism of the past. The certainty that there is always an alternative to fear of the future, and what conquers fear of the future is faith in the future.

Faith in who we are and what we believe, in what we are today and what we can become Faith most of all in what together we can achieve.

So we are not here to serve the market, it is here to serve every one of us. Governed by rules which reflect our morality it is our best hope of a better world. Let us imagine that world together. Let us fight for it together. And then with faith in the future let us build it together, for the world we build tomorrow is born in the hopes we share today.

Head Anglo Saxon In Charge?

Still LMAO about French President Nicolas Sarkozy calling the world econ-financial crisis the handiwork of “the Anglo-Saxons.”  On Monday, he had this to say according to the Times of London:

President Sarkozy yesterday threatened to wreck the London summit if France’s demands for tougher financial regulation are not met.

France will not accept a G20 that produces a “false success with language that sounds good but contains no commitments”, his advisers said.

So, the Frankish Empire is not happy, what about the Teutons?  Again, from the Times of London from Sunday:

GORDON BROWN’S carefully laid plans for a G20 deal on worldwide tax cuts have been scuppered by an eve-of-summit ambush by European leaders.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, last night led the assault on the prime minister’s “global new deal” for a $2 trillion-plus fiscal stimulus to end the recession.

“I will not let anyone tell me that we must spend more money,” she said.

Brown, British PM, and President Barack Obama would like to see more spending by the world’s largest governments to keep priming the pump to flush the world from this economic cycle.  Merkel and Sarkozy, not so much.  China on the other hand wants a new international currency – while those crazy Russians are calling tonight for a return to the gold standard.

Here’s what’s going to come out of this summit: Absolutely nothing new.