G-20: It’s too early to end stimulus

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland (AP) — Finance officials from rich and developing countries pledged Saturday to maintain emergency support for their economies until recovery is assured, but they failed to reach a clear agreement to bear the cost of fighting climate change.

There was also a mixed reaction among the Group of 20 leading rich and emerging nations to a British-led push to consider a fund for bank bailouts, possibly financed by a tax on financial transactions, to ensure that taxpayers don’t bear the brunt of any future rescues.

The grouping — representing around 90 percent of the world’s wealth, 80 percent of world trade and two-thirds of the world’s population — said in a statement after talks in St. Andrews, Scotland, that economic recovery is “uneven and remains dependent on policy support.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said U.S. jobs figures out Friday showing unemployment at a 26-year high of 10.2 percent “reinforced that this is still a very tough economic environment.”

Though the “process of growth is now beginning,” that fledging growth still needs to be reinforced to create jobs and get businesses investing to underpin the recovery in the housing market and elsewhere, Geithner said.

“If we put the brakes on too quickly, we will weaken the economy and the financial system, unemployment will rise, more businesses will fail, budget deficits will rise, and the ultimate cost of the crisis will be greater,” he told reporters in Scotland. “It is too early to start to lean against recovery.”

The statement smoothed over divisions among G-20 nations about whether it was time to start talking about exit strategies to unwind recent massive stimulus measures. Germany, France and Russia have called for a joint plan on when countries should start repaying debt, and the European Central Bank has indicated it will soon start withdrawing some of its emergency lending to banks.

On climate change, the G-20 officials also said they wanted “an ambitious outcome” at a major UN conference in Copenhagen next month — but did not commit to a funding package to help poorer nations adapt to a warming climate.

European nations have promoted a global climate fund of some 100 billion euros a year by 2020 — combining government and private finance — as an incentive for poor developing nations to agree to tight curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.

Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg, whose country holds the rotating European Union presidency, said no deal on financing would mean that “we will end up with a very difficult situation in Copenhagen.”

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said an agreement was scuppered by emerging nations’ unwillingness to contribute.

“Basically, a group of emerging nations made it clear that they were unwilling to invest their own funds in the fight against climate change,” he told reporters. “We were prepared for that and it was obvious that the industrialized countries would of course bear most of the burden.”

Schaeuble indirectly blamed their opposition to the failure of other rich nations — such as the U.S. — to pay up the money.