Nigel Sheinwald

G20 in Pittsburgh

This week, G20 leaders meet in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for their third summit since the global financial and economic crisis erupted last fall.

This will be a different sort of summit from the meeting in London in April. The world economy is showing the first signs of recovery.  Although it remains fragile, the crisis atmosphere seems to have abated. But, as my Prime Minister has made very clear,  "now is not the time to lose our focus"; nothing can be taken for granted and policymakers must not shirk from the challenges.

So as part of this it will important for leaders to review implementation of the commitments they made in April, including the establishment of the new, more inclusive Financial Stability Board to provide better oversight of financial regulation and supervision and more than $250bn in new bilateral funding for the IMF.

But it will be more than just a stocktaking exercise. President Obama's recent remarks on the forthcoming summit - that "all of us must remember that our work is far from complete" - is a salutary reminder of the profound economic challenges still facing our economies.

There will be much ground to cover but a few key strands are emerging. Can G20 leaders work together towards a new compact for global growth? Can we promote a sustained recovery, including identifying and supporting future sources of growth? How do we best demonstrate that the G20 will continue to take concrete action to mitigate the impact of the crisis on the poorest countries? And how does this process help us to address the acute issue of climate change?

None of these questions is straightforward. But leaders will need to find the answers. I will be in Pittsburgh on Thursday with the Prime Minister; I'll let you know how they all get on.

Posted at 16:27 21 September 2009 by Nigel Sheinwald  |  Comments[2]

My video blog on the London Summit

Posted at 17:16 26 March 2009 by Nigel Sheinwald  |  Comments[0]

Washington, New York and the Financial Crisis

The global financial crisis has been the number one issue for the Washington Embassy in recent weeks.  It’s been raised in nearly every meeting I have had, with the Administration, Congress, business leaders, journalists and of course the Presidential campaigns.  And it’s been at the centre of the Presidential debates – I was lucky enough to attend the second and third, in Tennessee and in New York. 

Our small Embassy economic team, drawn from the UK Treasury, Bank of England and Foreign Office, has never been busier. Throughout the past few weeks there have been constant contacts between our Government, Bank of England and regulatory authorities and their American counterparts, which the Embassy has helped facilitate. Our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, announced a major package of measures to stabilise the banking sector last week. Last weekend, the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, both stayed at my Residence while meeting their counterparts at the IMF and World Bank. It was my job and that of my team to explain our approach to our contacts here ahead of those meetings. Last weekend’s meetings of G7 and G20 Ministers drew on the main elements of the British plan and provided a new level of international coordination on handling the crisis. 

This in turn informed the decisions taken at the Euro Group meetings last Sunday and yesterday’s European Summit in Brussels. We now have a detailed and clear European position coordinated with the United States and our other major financial partners. 

The crisis was the subject on everyone’s lips at the historic Al Smith dinner in New York yesterday evening at which both Senator McCain and Senator Obama spoke – with great wit and dignity. Among those I talked to, there was a welcome recognition of the role played by Gordon Brown and other European leaders, in consultation with the US Administration, in helping to find a way forward. 

Gordon Brown has explained the present position in an article in today’s Washington Post. This looks beyond the immediate stabilisation of the financial system to the need for major reform of the global financial architecture and a sound new regulatory framework. These will provide the best basis for avoiding a recurrence of the turbulence we have seen over the past year or more. The UK strongly supports the idea of holding a Leaders’ Summit in the near future to discuss a shared international response to the longer term issues thrown up by this first global financial crisis of the 21^st Century. 

I expect this set of issues to remain high on the Embassy’s agenda in the weeks and months ahead.

Posted at 15:55 17 October 2008 by Nigel Sheinwald  |  Comments[1]