Obama calls upon G20 leaders for “both/and” approach

President Barack Obama urges leaders of the G20 to send "a strong message of unity" on confronting the world financial crisis during their meeting this week.

He highlighted that there were signs of improvement in current economies, including the area of the American housing market.

Obama said objective for the G20 summit was to get the leaders to take a "robust approach to stimulus," deal with toxic assets in the financial system and agree on regulatory reform for preventing such a crisis from occurring again.

He noted that the leading economies had to build a new financial regulatory structure and switch from “an 'either/or' approach," to “both/and” approach. He stated, “We need stimulus and we need regulation.” He added that this regulatory reform would include discussions of offshore tax havens to ensure everyone played by the same rules.

He ended by saying the tension in all the countries between the steps to be taken to restart the economy and that many of these steps were very expensive and taxpayers had skepticism about spending too much of their money, especially when it was perceived that some of it was being spent “not on them but on others who they perceive may have helped precipitate the crisis" was understandable.