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The Scouting Report: Previewing the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit
 
12:19
Fred Barbash -  We are getting ready to start the chat. Please stay tuned....
12:29
Fred Barbash-Moderator -   Welcome everyone and welcome Colin Bradford. Thanks so much for doing this. On September 24 and 25, 2009, world leaders will gather at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, an important city in the U.S. economic recovery plan. With September marking the one-year anniversary of a series of events that accelerated the U.S. and global financial crises, the G-20 in Pittsburgh provides a good opportunity to review recovery progress in the world’s largest economies. President Barack Obama is expected to speak about the U.S. experience over the past year, touching on various aspects of recovery management, including the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns and banker bonuses.

Colin Bradford, former chief economist at the U.S. Agency for International Development, is here to answer your questions about the G-20 Summit and global economic recovery.

 

Let me begin by asking…why Pittsburgh?

12:31
Colin Bradford -  Glad to be here today and I look forward to all the questions.

Pittsburgh, because it's western Pennsylvania and Ohio where jobs are the key public issue for the ordinary person. So, it focuses the summit not on the complexity of financial markets, transactions and other complex issue, but something that people understand job loss, mortgage payments and reteirement funds.
12:32
[Comment From Daniel Lippman, DC]
What do you assess are the prospects for getting financial regulatory reform thru Congress this year? And, the G20 will be talking a lot about rebalancing the world economy with US being less of a consumer and more of a saver. But if you shift that way, couldn't that hurt economic growth just as we're getting out of the recession?
12:33
Colin Bradford -  This is a two-year project, not only in the U.S. but in the international markets , as well. Finanical reform is a key project of all the nations of G-20. The role of this summit is to keep the pressure on parliaments, in general, to institute reform.
12:35
Colin Bradford -  The simple answer to your second  question is yes. The complicated answer is, if China reduces its saving and increases its consumption, then consumption driven growth in China would increase its imports from the rest of the world - including the United States.
12:36
[Comment From Paola Peduzzi]
Do you think there will be a real rift between US and China at G20?
12:38
Colin Bradford -  No. I think there is awareness in both countries and governments of the need for rebalancing. The good news here is that the attention is being focused on internal imbalances (like the U.S. fiscal deficit) rather than on exchange rates which  are a reflection of imbalances as well as a cause of them.
12:38
[Comment From Chia Ting Chen, Ph. D]
What would be the impacts of the US's printing of so much money on the US and the world?
12:39
Colin Bradford -  The simplistic answer is that expansionary monetary policy along with expansionary fiscal policy does put more money in circulation
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