WASHINGTON (The Canadian Press) - Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says the United States and Europe need to move faster to fix their ailing banks or there will be no worldwide economic recovery.
"This is a must-do - the banks have to be fixed in the United States and in Europe for the economies to start to recover," he said at the G7 meeting of financial ministers and central bank governors in the U.S. capital.
"There has been concern with the delay in dealing with the problems with the banks in the United States and in Europe for that matter ... we will not have economic recovery without fixing the banks."
Flaherty and Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney faced the media a day after the central bank reported the Canadian economy had contracted at the steepest pace in at least 50 years in the first quarter of 2009.
The finance minister stopped short of complaining about the United States dragging its feet, as Carney did on Thursday, and said he's encouraged to hear the Americans have been analyzing which of their banks are at the greatest risk of failure.
But he said the results of the so-called stress tests were not discussed Friday with U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner during the G7 meetings. Flaherty was to meet later in the day with G20 financial ministers and central bank governors.
The U.S. Federal Reserve said Friday that the federal government is prepared to rescue any of the banks that underwent stress tests and were deemed vulnerable if the recession worsened sharply.
Flaherty says fixing banks is the key to global economic recovery
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Published on
April 25, 2009
- Published on July 10, 2009
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