World leaders prepared to adopt an early warning system for financial calamities, a commitment to tougher accounting rules and other modest steps to try to prevent crises like the one now threatening the livelihoods of billions of people around the globe.
Nearly two dozen leaders dined in extravagance at the White House on Friday in a prelude to negotiations yesterday over how best to wrestle global economies back from the brink of economic disaster.
The leaders were on track to approve measures to make the world financial system more accountable to investors and more transparent to regulators, said diplomatic sources, speaking on condition of anonymity. To do so, the leaders were expected to endorse more effective accounting rules governing how companies value their assets, a weakness seen as partly responsible for the current financial crisis.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
A new early warning system would look for signs of burgeoning problems like those in the US housing market and related overuse of mortgage-backed securities. On Friday, the heads of the IMF, the world’s financial firefighter, and the Financial Stability Forum, a group that includes central banks and major financial regulators, said they would cooperate on “early warning exercises” to detect vulnerabilities.
Bush gave Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd a less than warm welcome at the White House dinner amid controversy over a leaked conversation between them, a report said yesterday.
Bush “appeared somewhat standoffish” as he greeted Rudd, the Australian Associated Press reported from Washington.
At the heart of the controversy is a claim in an Australian newspaper last month that Bush displayed embarrassing ignorance by asking Rudd in a telephone call about the crisis: “What’s the G20?”
The allegation has been denied by both Canberra and Washington.
“While other world leaders got big smiles and pats on the back from Mr. Bush, the Australian prime minister had to make do with a brief handshake and a relatively stony face from the president as the pair posed for photographers and TV crews,” the report said.
Taiwan is projected to lose a working-age population of about 6.67 million people in two waves of retirement in the coming years, as the nation confronts accelerating demographic decline and a shortage of younger workers to take their place, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan experienced its largest baby boom between 1958 and 1966, when the population grew by 3.78 million, followed by a second surge of 2.89 million between 1976 and 1982, ministry data showed. In 2023, the first of those baby boom generations — those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s — began to enter retirement, triggering
One of two tropical depressions that formed off Taiwan yesterday morning could turn into a moderate typhoon by the weekend, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Tropical Depression No. 21 formed at 8am about 1,850km off the southeast coast, CWA forecaster Lee Meng-hsuan (李孟軒) said. The weather system is expected to move northwest as it builds momentum, possibly intensifying this weekend into a typhoon, which would be called Mitag, Lee said. The radius of the storm is expected to reach almost 200km, she said. It is forecast to approach the southeast of Taiwan on Monday next week and pass through the Bashi Channel
NO CHANGE: The TRA makes clear that the US does not consider the status of Taiwan to have been determined by WWII-era documents, a former AIT deputy director said The American Institute in Taiwan’s (AIT) comments that World War-II era documents do not determine Taiwan’s political status accurately conveyed the US’ stance, the US Department of State said. An AIT spokesperson on Saturday said that a Chinese official mischaracterized World War II-era documents as stating that Taiwan was ceded to the China. The remarks from the US’ de facto embassy in Taiwan drew criticism from the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation, whose director said the comments put Taiwan in danger. The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday reported that a US State Department spokesperson confirmed the AIT’s position. They added that the US would continue to
The number of Chinese spouses applying for dependent residency as well as long-term residency in Taiwan has decreased, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday, adding that the reduction of Chinese spouses staying or living in Taiwan is only one facet reflecting the general decrease in the number of people willing to get married in Taiwan. The number of Chinese spouses applying for dependent residency last year was 7,123, down by 2,931, or 29.15 percent, from the previous year. The same census showed that the number of Chinese spouses applying for long-term residency and receiving approval last year stood at 2,973, down 1,520,
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