World leaders pledge to revive global economy

The talks were undoubtedly remarkable, however, for drawing together such a vast number and array of nations and bringing them to agreement on a set of actions, however limited, in less than a month's time. Leaders from major powers including Britain, Germany, France and Japan were there, alongside rulers from developing countries such as China, India, Brazil and South Korea as well as from the oil-rich Gulf state of Saudi Arabia. The summit was just announced on Oct. 22, and the urgency of the downward-spiraling global economic situation led to much faster action than is typical in the usually glacial diplomatic arena.

With fears high that signs of discord among the world's most powerful politicians could send markets plunging again come Monday, the presidents and prime ministers appeared uncharacteristically determined to hold their tongues about any disagreement over either the cause of the current crisis or their compromise agreement. This despite the fact that the action plan seemed to lean in most areas far more toward the U.S. preference for boosting oversight and free-market incentives than the European desire for increased regulation and requirements.

Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso emerged with praise for the meeting as a sign of historic cooperation.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said after the summit that "despite the great diversity of countries in the room for those two days of the summit, there was a practically unanimous agreement on all major topics."

Bush, though, is on his way out of office and the leaders were clearly looking beyond him to his successor. Many met on the sidelines of the summit with Obama's surrogates, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Republican Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, while speculating about whether the Democratic president-elect might veer from Bush's approach by the time of the next summit.

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"The president-elect believes that the G-20 summit of leaders from the world's largest economies is an important opportunity to seek a coordinated response to the global financial crisis," Albright and Leach said in a statement late Saturday. "There is one president at a time, so the president-elect asked us to represent him in receiving the views of these important partners. We also conveyed President-elect Obama's determination to continuing to work together on these challenges after he takes office in January."

Still, Bush made sure he kept an iron grip on the proceedings. His was the only voice heard in any official setting — during the toast at Friday's dinner and before and after the closed summit meetings. All the other leaders had to scramble to set up briefings or news conferences at alternative sites in order to express their thoughts.

The inclusion of the developing nations was demanded by Bush, in part in hopes they would act as a brake on European desires for tough new regulations of financial firms or products. But the decision also was hailed as necessary to the effectiveness of such a meeting, because the financial crisis that began in the U.S. had spread to the poorer nations.

Indeed, one goal of the meeting was to boost the effort to help such struggling nations weather the financial crisis largely caused by their bigger, more developed counterparts. Japan's prime minister, Taro Aso, urged China and others to contribute to the International Monetary Fund's $250 billion bailout pool, aimed mostly at poorer countries. Japan on Friday said it was ready to put in as much as $100 billion.

Talk of blame was kept to a minimum, though many still hold the belief that the primary fault for the cascade of ruinous events lies with the U.S., where it has become the norm to offer easy credit, outsized rewards for high-risk investing, and lax oversight to the whole process.

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