World leaders yesterday closed in on a deal to jumpstart the sputtering global economy at one of the most important summits of recent decades.
After sharp differences over how to restore confidence, representatives of US President Barack Obama and other G20 leaders agreed the IMF could get up to US$500 billion in extra funding and a tax haven black list could be drawn up.
The British summit hosts expressed confidence an agreement would be clinched from the divisions at the meeting, which is being widely watched by markets and has sparked anti-capitalism riots in London in which one man died.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in his opening speech to the summit that there was a “very high degree of consensus.”
The summit has focused on measures to regulate financial markets, a clampdown on excessive corporate salaries and tax havens and increasing funding for the IMF.
Delegations were discussing ways to find hundreds of billions of dollars for the IMF and other institutions, diplomats said.
There was broad agreement on drawing up a “shame and name” blacklist of tax havens to force changes in banking secrecy.
Tax havens that refuse to share information with other countries will face “sanctions,” Stephen Timms, financial secretary to the British treasury, told reporters.
“In due course there will be a list produced of countries that don’t sign up ... what’s being discussed today is the timing,” he said. “The era of banking secrecy is over.”
A draft summit communique also called for restrictions on bonuses for bankers to discourage short-term risks.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned in an article for Britain’s Guardian newspaper that more than economics was at stake in London.
He said that unless decisive action was taken, the crisis could lead to a “growing social unrest, weakened governments and angry publics who have lost all faith in their leaders and their own future.”
Inside the summit, rifts “persisted” on how to draw up a new rule book for international finance and stimulus measures and combat protectionism, Britain’s Business Secretary Peter Mandelson told reporters.
France and Germany have demanded tough action by G20 leaders on regulation of global finance.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who last week blamed “white people with blue eyes” for the global economic crisis, tried to dampen expectations for the summit’s final statement.
“We cannot leave with nothing,” he said, noting that traders around the world were looking to London for a sign. “We can only hope for the best possible agreement.”
Meanwhile, Russia yesterday expressed regret that the idea of a new supranational currency that could in the future replace the dollar as a reserve currency was not on the table at the G20 summit.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the economic gathering in London that it was important to address ways to improve the global currency system in the coming months, said a Kremlin official familiar with the matter.
A list of new regional currencies also has to be expanded to boost the global currency market which currently remained unstable, Medvedev said.
However, he cautioned that Russia did not seek to weaken the established currencies like the dollar, the pound or the euro.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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