G7 meets to protect world growth

G7 meets to protect world growth

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/869025E8-162D-48F8-9261-F2110A3692C3.htm

Saturday 24 April 2004, 1:46 Makka Time, 22:46 GMT


Members are worried about the massive US trade deficit



Group of Seven financial powers have gathered in Washington with an eye on protecting rapid world growth by trimming a massive US trade deficit.


With the dizzying slide in the dollar apparently checked, the need to restore stability to exchange markets is less urgent than when finance ministers and central bank governors from the world's richest nations last met in February.

Instead, the task now will be to prevent robust US momentum and rising oil prices from igniting inflationary pressures and to ensure that Europe, where the recovery is sputtering, takes advantage of the rebound elsewhere.

"Now is the time for all the leading economies to make last changes that will help generate stronger global growth and can be sustained well into the future," US Treasury Secretary John Snow has argued.

Mankiw says offshoring jobs makes jobs here; surely this massive trade deficit is just more good news!!!