sorry, david.
anyway, from the ft today, have a look at this:
Finance ministers responding to turmoil
By Robert Chote, Economics Editor, and Edward Luce in Washington and Philip Coggan in London
Finance ministers and central bank governors insisted yesterday they had responded appropriately to the financial crisis, but promised to do more to bolster global growth if the situation worsened.
Hans Tietmeyer, president of the Bundesbank, said it might be necessary to cut interest rates further. "If this were to become necessary, we too [at the Bundesbank] would not make it a taboo from the outset," he said.
But he added monetary policy in Europe's putative single currency area was already set to loosen as interest rates in peripheral economies converged on the 3.3 per cent rate.
This echoed the communiqúe of the International Monetary Fund's key ministerial committee, released late on Sunday night. "Should there be a worsening of the crisis or a further slowdown in economic activity, additional action on both domestic and international grounds would be required by both emerging market economies and industrial countries," it concluded.
The communiqe reflected the change of mood regarding capital flows. References to the merits of "liberalising" capital flows were gone, replaced by the judgment that the opening of the capital account "must be carried out in an orderly, gradual and well-sequenced manner, keeping its pace in line with the strengthening of countries' ability to sustain its consequences".
George Soros, owner of one of the largest hedge funds in the world, yesterday warned the global capitalist system was heading for collapse if present policies continued. Mr Soros, who lost several hundred million dollars on the positions he took in Russia and Malaysia in the last 12 months, said there would be a strong political backlash against capitalism in countries such as Russia unless swift remedial action was taken by the rich countries. Mr Soros criticised as "weak" the G7 pledges to address the global financial crisis. "We should lock them [the G7 finance ministers] into a room until they hammer out a solution to this crisis," he said.
World equity markets were disheartened by the lack of action from the G7 finance ministers and continued their recent sell-off. In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 average fell another 2.1 per cent to 12,948.12, its lowest level since January 1986. European shares were also lower with the FTSE 100 index in London recording its third successive three-digit loss, ending off 101.7 at 4,648.7, its worst finish since June 1997.
On Wall Street, technology stocks took a particular hammering in early trading. By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 63.34 at 7721.35 and the Nasdaq down 78.29 at 1,536.69.
Meanwhile the Group of 22, a collection of industrial and emerging market economies assembled by the US earlier this year, published a series of proposals to strengthen the architecture of the international monetary system.
This included asking the IMF to publish an annual "transparency report" on each of its member countries. |
