WASHINGTON — Wary of complacency, President Barack Obama will urge a summit of world financial powers to stick with efforts to boost the global economy rather than abandon coordinated economic stimulus work, a top White House adviser said Wednesday.
Obama next week is hosting the Group of 20 nations in Pittsburgh, Pa., for a status check on the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The circumstances are far less dire than in April, when leaders of the same nations met in London, pledging more than $1 trillion in loans and other coordination to halt the freefall.
In the U.S., Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke now says the recession is probably over, but many people will still struggle to find jobs.
"Pittsburgh is not intended to be a victory lap," said Obama adviser Mike Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economics. "We will be underscoring the need to remain vigilant."
He emphasized that meant not withdrawing from global economic stimulus efforts too quickly.
Setting expectations, Froman said the summit will not yield any major announcements of new spending. As he put it, this one is "not a trillion-dollar summit."
But the U.S. does want to emerge with tangible progress in areas that are priorities for Obama and many of his peers.
Among them: reform of how the global financial system is regulated; agreement on how to ensure sustainable economic growth, including some type of process for developing and industrial countries to hold each other accountable; and more effort to rein in hefty pay and bonuses for financial executives.
Each broad area, though, contains the potential for countries to splinter on the specifics.
The G-20 playbook is expected to follow what the top finance officials from the rich and developing countries agreed to in London earlier this month. The finance ministers pledged to maintain stimulus measures, such as extra government spending and low interest rates, to boost the global economy. Their message was that fiscal and monetary policy should stay "expansionary" for as long as needed to reduce the chances of a double-dip recession.
Froman said the mood of the nations’ elected leaders remains similarly sober-minded.
"We may have come back from the brink, but I don’t think people are at all complacent about where we are," Froman told reporters in a trip briefing.
Obama will be in New York from Monday through Wednesday for the U.N. General Assembly. He is expected to arrive in Pittsburgh on Thursday for the G-20 summit and attend a working dinner with other leaders that night. He will take part in G-20 sessions Friday, hold a news conference and fly back to Washington.
The G-20 includes Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, Britain and the U.S. The European Union, represented by its rotating presidency and the European Central Bank, is the 20th member.
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