Bush looking for help

November 22, 2008 at 3:12 am (Uncategorized) (america, bush, crisis, economy, financial, financial crisis, george, help, news, obama, politics, states, threatens, us, world, world economy)

President George W Bush does not see his final Asia-Pacific summit this week in South America as a farewell but rather a chance to enlist more nations in the battle against a financial crisis that threatens to pull the world economy into a severe economic recession.

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In a pre-trip briefing, Bush administration officials said that the president was focused on getting more nations to sign on to a broad action plan adopted in Washington last weekend by the Group of 20 nations. He also will have one-on-one talks with the leaders of Russia, China, South Korea and Japan. Bush leaves on Friday for a three-day trip to Lima, Peru, where he will attend the 21-nation Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, likely his last summit with world leaders. Nine of the nations at the summit also attended the Washington summit meeting on the global economic crisis, a gathering of about 20 leaders representing the seven wealthiest nations and major emerging economies, China, Brazil and India. Dan Price, the president’s deputy national security adviser for economic affairs, said Bush and the other G-20 leaders who will be attending the APEC meetings were eager to get endorsement for the outlines of the G-20 action plan which proposed a series of approaches countries should pursue to attack a financial crisis that began in the United States with rising defaults on subprime variable-rate mortgages but has now spread globally. The G-20 action plan endorsed increased government stimulus efforts and directed finance ministers to search for ways to improve regulation of financial markets. It was lax regulation in such areas as credit rating agencies and on complex financial instruments, such as certain types of derivatives, that are seen as a root cause of the financial meltdown.