Finance ministers and central bankers from the
Group of 20 countries met in Mexico City for two days of talks on the
eurozone debt crisis, improving regulation of financial markets, and
the U.S. deficit.
"There is concern over how the so-called fiscal cliff will be
resolved in the United States," Mexican Finance Minister Jose Antonio
Meade told reporters before a dinner late Sunday with his
counterparts to open the talks.
He was referring to the risk posed by tax rises and spending cuts
in the US due to take effect at the end of the year, and which have
already earned Washington a warning from the International Monetary
Fund that the country could fall back into recession.
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and European Central Bank
President Mario Draghi are among several who have cancelled their
attendance at the two-day meeting, which brings together the world's
top 20 developed and emerging economies.
It comes at the beginning of an economically and politically
significant week, with the US presidential elections on Tuesday and
the Greek parliament voting on a 13.5-billion-euro savings package on
Wednesday.
Germany, which is sending Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and
Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann, is set to press for further efforts
to clean up public finances and spur long-term targets for reducing
public debt.
Current agreements by which G20 countries are supposed to cut
their budget deficits in half by 2013 and stabilize their levels of
debt are not enough, sources in the German Finance Ministry said.
Major G20 countries the United States, Britain and Japan are a
long way from halving their budget deficits by next year.
The agenda will also include better regulation of the financial
markets to curb risk-taking and increase supervision of private
financial operators, as it has since the financial crisis erupted in
2008.
It is the last such gathering that Mexico will host before handing
over the rotating presidency of the group to Russia for 2013.
