Global leaders struggle to calm fears of recession

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The world’s economic powers struggled Friday to get on top of a European debt crisis that is threatening to dump the global economy back into recession.

Officials gathered for three days of discussion pledged to push forward to fulfill the goals of a program in which the Group of 20 major economies promised stronger cooperation to jump-start global growth and help Greece avoid a destabilizing default.

But private economists questioned whether the latest action plan unveiled by the G-20 countries Thursday night went far enough to deal with market concerns that a Greek default is a virtual certainty that threatens to destabilize other highly indebted European countries.

All of the discussions about European debt were occurring around the annual meetings of the 187-nation International Monetary Fund and its sister lending agency, the World Bank.

In advance of those talks, the G-20 finance officials, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, pledged a bold effort to deal with the debt crisis and encouraged Europe to move quickly to implement its promises to help Greece.

The G-20 statement had little impact on the market’s sour mood, with stocks continuing to tumble in Asia and Europe. Wall Street, which saw the Dow Jones industrial average plunge 391 points Thursday, initially headed lower Friday but then stabilized.

At the close of trading, the Dow was up 37 points Friday, but private economists predicted more down days for stocks in coming weeks as investors continue to fear the consequences of a Greek debt default.

Jay Bryson, global economist at Wells Fargo Securities, contrasted the G-20 statement Thursday with the bold program the G-20 put forward in London in April 2009 at the height of that financial crisis with billions of dollars of support put forward to boost economic growth and provide a financial backstop for the IMF to rescue countries in trouble.

“You’ve got to back up words with actions,” Bryson said of Thursday’s statement, which he said was an example of “political paralysis.”

The finance ministers at the Washington meetings said they believed that the 17 nations that use the common euro currency were getting the message that they needed to move much more quickly to reform their surveillance procedures and boost their economic support.