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

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.