US President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged coordinated action to fight the worldwide economic crisis, joining British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s call for a global response.
Obama told reporters during his Oval Office meeting with Brown that he was “absolutely confident” his administration’s plans to shore up the banking system would yield results.
In comments that gave a temporary lift to battered stock prices, Obama also said there were “potentially good deals” to be found at the market’s current depressed levels.
“What I’m looking at is not the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market but the long-term ability for the United States and the entire world economy to regain its footing,” he said.
“One of the things that Prime Minister Brown and I talked about is how can we coordinate so that all the G20 countries, all the major countries around the world, in a coordinated fashion, are stimulating their economies?” he said.
Obama and Brown both called for common principles to bolster the financial regulatory structure.
Brown was the first European leader to visit Obama since he took office on Jan. 20. Before traveling to Washington, Brown called for a “global New Deal” in which countries would work together to jump-start growth, revamp financial rules and boost funding to the IMF.
“We’ve had a global banking failure and it’s happened in every part of the world,” he said. “We’ve got to rebuild that financial system. We’ve got to isolate the bad assets.”
Brown was to deliver a speech to the US Congress yesterday while Obama was to outline a plan to save tens of billions of dollars a year in wasteful government spending, especially defense contracting.
Obama was scheduled to sign a presidential memorandum reforming the contracting system across the entire government, in line with a vow to cut unnecessary waste, an administration official said. He aims to save US$40 billion each year by halting outsourcing in some government jobs, and by ending “no-bid” contracts for favored companies.
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