The Office of the Press Secretary of The White House (US) announced today that G-20 leaders had reached a historic agreement to put the G-20 at the center of efforts to work together to build a durable recovery while avoiding the financial fragilities that led to the crisis.
Leaders endorsed the G-20 as the premier forum for their international economic cooperation. This decision brings to the table the countries needed to build a stronger, more balanced global economy, reform the financial system, and lift the lives of the poorest. *“This builds on the decision made in April to expand the Financial Stability Board to include all G-20 countries and to add all the G-20 members to the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information. The Financial Stability Board is central to our efforts to develop and implement sweeping reforms to transform the system of global regulation. The Global Forum is the primary vehicle in the G-20’s effort to promote greater tax transparency.”*
Earlier, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner conducted a [Press Briefing](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Press-Briefing-by-Treasury-Secretary-Geithner-on-the-G20-Meetings) on the G20 Meetings, indicating that the key objective for the summit is to establish consensus on much stronger standards across financial systems. *“We are not going to walk away from the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression and leave unchanged, and leave in place, the tragic vulnerabilities that caused this crisis..”* He added, *“So you’re going to see tomorrow not just us reach agreement on the key priorities for reform in strengthening capital standards, in reforming compensation practices, in bringing derivatives markets and hedge funds into an adequate framework of oversight, trying to make sure we have better tools to respond to future financial crises, where you’re going to see us lay out more concrete time frames to put those reforms in place.”*