The New York Times has an article today in INTERNATIONAL / EUROPE | April 03, 2009 World Leaders Pledge $1.1 Trillion for Crisis By MARK LANDLER and DAVID E. SANGER.
Their focus is on President Obama. I was interested more in the measures proposed by the Group of 20 that would reverse the global downturn and address issues of concern to this blog. Though I have quoted from the news article, the links go directly to the IMF webpages.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, host of the Group of 20 summit meeting called to fight the crisis, announced at its conclusion that the leaders had committed to $1.1 trillion in new funds that would greatly increase the capital available to the International Monetary Fund.
“This is the day the world came together to fight against the global recession. Our message today is clear and certain: we believe that global problems require global solutions.” Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister
This is not the same, in my view, as the long term and sustainable solutions proposed by the Millennium Development Goals themselves. It is a quick and necessary fix.
China is expected to contribute $40 billion. Japan and the European Union each pledged $100 billion. The United States has said it will contribute $100 billion, too, though that requires Congressional approval.
So the next action I would expect from Change.org and Avaaz would be to get Congress to fund the $100 billion. What I have to wonder is if we had a world that had fully funded the Millennium Development Goals in a timely manner, would we have found our selves in this mess.
