But all countries are seeking to achieve the same sense of balance in policies, with a broad consensus that the focus should still be on growth, the official said. Geithner once again stressed the administration’s commitment to returning to a path of fiscal sustainability, promising a quick reduction in deficits starting in 2011. Growing concerns about soaring U.S. debt levels have weighed on U.S. Treasurys and the dollar, and the currency took a hit earlier in the week after Russia’s central bank said it would cut its U.S. asset holdings as it bought $10 billion of IMF bonds.
However, Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin downplayed the move after meeting with Geithner Friday, saying he doesn’t expect “any significant changes in our policy with regards to dollar-denominated paper” over the next year. Geithner said he didn’t have “a significant discussion” about the issue with G8 ministers, including in his bilateral meeting with Kudrin. When asked about rising Treasury yields and commodity prices, Geithner said the “dominant” force in financial markets over the past couple of months has been a “welcome reduction in acute concern” about the threat of a more severe recession, deflation and systemic financial problems. The G8 said it had begun a discussion on the appropriate “exit strategies” once the recovery is assured, and tasked the International Monetary Fund with preparing an analysis.
A senior U
Like the communique, Geithner was also more upbeat about the economic outlook, crediting unprecedented global policy action for the “encouraging signs of stabilization across many economies.” Financial market improvements were a reflection of growing confidence in banking systems, especially in the U.S., he said. Next week, the Obama administration will unveil proposals for overhauling both the U.S. and international regulatory system, and Geithner cited the need for a level playing field globally so that national safeguards aren’t undermined. In addition to greater oversight of international financial institutions and products like derivatives, the administration will propose more conservative capital ratios internationally and for regulators to come up with ideas for a toolkit to deal with cross-border failures of financial institutions by year-end.
S. Chamber of Commerce this week announced that it would launch a national advocacy campaign to defend free enterprise against “anti-business activists,” referring to administration initiatives
President Barack Obama’s chief economist on Friday defended White House economic policies against criticism that they https://besthookupwebsites.org/escort/clovis/ amounted to “a kind of back-door socialism.” In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers said Mr. Obama’s interventions “will go with, rather than against, the grain of the market system.” Mr. Summers’s rea’s use of government mechanisms to revamp big segments of the economy are increasingly finding their voice. The U.
Mr. Summers also laid out an ambitious goal ahead of Mr. Obama’s Wednesday speech on the re-regulation of financial markets: ending a decades-long barrage of financial crises. “If we can reform our financial system, we will minimize the recurrence of the situation we all find ourselves in today,” he said, reciting a litany of crises from the savings-and-loan collapse in the late 1980s to last year’s housing-market bust. While Mr. Summers’s speech was billed as a prelude to next week’s efforts on financial-market regulation, most of it was devoted to defending the administration’s aggressive economic policies.
Those policies have seen the government take control of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and insurer American International Group Inc.; take large stakes in General Motors and Citigroup; and usher Chrysler into and out of bankruptcy while shifting the balance of power between creditors and unions. Such “extraordinary actions” were done out of necessity, not choice, Mr. Summers said. And just as history has judged Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal as saving capitalism, not destroying it, Mr. Obama’s efforts eventually will be seen as pro-free market, he said. “If you take one message from what I say today, take this: Only if government is no longer a major presence in these companies in short order will we have fully succeeded in achieving our critical objectives,” Mr. Summers said.