FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Good afternoon.  As you know, we have a long weekend of meetings ahead of us.  In addition to the larger meetings that begin tomorrow morning, I have 18 bilateral meetings over the next five days.  I’m looking forward to engaging with my colleagues from around the world, particularly on three important topics.  First, putting in place a system to prevent financial crises and when they occur to identify them early, resolve them in a predictable way and prohibit them from spreading to other nations.  Second, getting real measurable results from development assistance.  And third, advancing our continued efforts to interdict terrorist financing. 

Our meetings will begin tomorrow morning with a gathering of the Western Hemisphere Finance Ministers.  We set aside time for this meeting to discuss how we can best work together to advance our mutual prosperity in the years ahead, and put the challenging economic times of the past few years behind us.  If you look at the large countries in our hemisphere that have prospered in the last decade, they have certain things in common, opening their economies and expanding economic freedom for their people.

 When I meet with my G7 colleagues, I will report that I believe the U.S. economy is on the bumpy road to recovery.  I remain convinced that we are on a path to 3-3.5% real annual growth by the end of the year.   And I look forward to hearing from my colleagues what they intend to do to spur growth in their economies.

This weekend we will have several discussions on ways to improve predictability and reduce uncertainty in emerging markets.  I believe we must move forward on all four parts of our April G7 Action Plan – collective action clauses, a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism, hard limits on IMF lending, and improved surveillance and crisis prevention. A predictable, smooth process for nations that are in unsustainable situations will ease the chaos the current system creates in the lives of too many people who have been failed by their government’s inaction. 

With the IDA-13 replenishment, the world’s donor community has agreed to provide a substantial portion of its assistance as grants, while embracing a commitment to achieving measurable results.  Now is the time to implement that agenda.  I look forward to a useful discussion to establish the concrete steps we must now take to ensure we achieve results.  We must decide what it is we are going to measure, so that we can hold ourselves accountable for making a real difference in the lives of the people we are all so eager to help.

Finally, we will continue to advance our continued efforts in the war on terrorist financing.  We’ve made good progress in the past twelve months, as each of us has committed to collecting better information and sharing between nations to enhance our efforts to shut down the flow of money to terrorists and to follow the money trail to hunt down the terrorist financiers themselves.  By putting in place the tools necessary to protect our financial system from being abused by those who would finance terror, we are also improving our ability to shut down money laundering and other financial crimes.  As we broaden our focus to other means of moving funds, outside the regular financial system, close international cooperation will be even more vital.