Attempting to bridge deep divides in policy and financial philosophy, the leaders of nearly two dozen of the world’s largest economies agreed Thursday to a broad array of new fiscal and regulatory steps, in a desperate effort to revive the paralyzed global economy.
At the conclusion of the first economic summit meeting to rivet world attention in decades, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain announced that the leaders had committed to $1.1 trillion in additional loans and guarantees to finance trade and bail out troubled countries.
But the funds he announced are well short of a direct injection of stimulus into the world’s economic bloodstream ”” the result of a continuing division between continental Europe and much of the rest of the world over whether to act now or wait see how current spending measures take effect.
“This is the day the world came together to fight against the global recession,” Mr. Brown declared. “Our message today is clear and certain: we believe global problems require global solutions.”