PARIS (MNI) – Finance Ministers and Central Bankers of the G20 will
use their first meeting under the French presidency to seek the most
appropriate indicators signaling global imbalances, French Finance
Minister Christine Lagarde said Friday.
“At the meeting that is about to start tonight we are going to
focus essentially on identifying those indicators that best indicate
where you measure the imbalance, and we will follow on with how we will
actually use those indicators to better measure the road that we have to
travel so that we have better coordination and better collaboration,”
Lagarde said.
Lagarde said that a failure to adjust global imbalances would
either lead to “yet another debt crisis” or “”weak global growth and an
increase of global protectionism.”
Only if there is cooperation, with surplus countries ready to boost
domestic demand and deficit countries to adopt more prudent fiscal
spending will the world be able to “reconcile global growth with
reduction of imbalances,” she added.
–Frankfurt bureau, +49-69-720142, jtreeck@marketnews.com
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