Brown was joined on Saturday by other top economic policymakers in his call for a transformation of the G-20 to help it remain relevant in a global economy torn by clashing national interests -- although their focus differed somewhat from his. To tackle high unemployment in poor and rich nations and a lack of economic growth in Europe and the United States, politicians need to look beyond merely reducing deficits, Brown said. “All around the world deficit reduction has become the big issue when actually it’s only one of the issues,” Brown told a panel in Brussels debating the relevance of the G-20. The panel also included Pascal Lamy, the director general of the World Trade Organization, and World Bank President Robert Zoellick. Brown said the G-20 was at a juncture that would decide whether it can deliver prosperity to poorer nations in the Middle East and North Africa as well as more established economies in America and Europe.
His comments come as tens of thousands of people were marching through the streets of London to protest austerity measures and political upheavals continue in Northern Africa and the Middle East triggered in part by huge youth unemployment. They also come ahead of a meeting of G-20 central bank governors and cabinet ministers in Nanjing, China, on Thursday -- convened by French President Nicolas Sarkozy -- to discuss reform of the global monetary system. France has made such a reform one of the focal points of its yearlong presidency of the G-20, along with reducing economic imbalances and volatility in commodity prices.
While Brown said an overhaul of the monetary system was necessary, he chose to take a broader view. “I cannot imagine that the world can solve the unemployment problem we’ve got without closer economic cooperation,” he told the panel, organized by the United States’ German Marshall Fund, a nonpartisan public policy group.
