{"id":33026,"date":"2013-05-13T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-13T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/divisions-between-major-powers-dominate-g-7-meeting\/33026\/"},"modified":"2013-05-13T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-13T04:00:00","slug":"divisions-between-major-powers-dominate-g-7-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/divisions-between-major-powers-dominate-g-7-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"Divisions between major powers dominate G-7 meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h5>\n      By<br \/>\n      Nick Beams<br \/>\n      <br \/>13 May 2013<br \/>\n  <\/h5>\n<p>A meeting of G-7 finance ministers held outside London over the weekend was marked by widening differences over economic policy and concerns about the implications of the \u201cquantitative easing\u201d monetary policies of the world\u2019s major central banks.<\/p>\n<p>The differences over economic policy are being fuelled by the fact that almost five years since the global financial crisis erupted, the world economy, far from showing any signs of a sustained recovery, evinces deepening recessionary trends.<\/p>\n<p>This has led to a situation in which each of the G-7 major powers&#8211;Britain, the US, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Japan&#8211;is more and more openly and aggressively pushing an agenda that reflects its own national interests.<\/p>\n<p>The meeting was convened by the current G-7 chairman Britain, somewhat surprisingly given that the G-20 had met in Washington little more than a month ago. The weekend meeting was viewed as a less formal gathering.<\/p>\n<p>But the semi-formal character of the gathering and the absence of a final communiqu\u00c3\u00a9 meant that the differences could emerge somewhat more clearly than otherwise might have been the case.<\/p>\n<p>Before the meeting got underway, US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew criticised the Europeans for their failure to revive the euro zone economy and repeated American demands that they somewhat ease their budget-cutting.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe feel very strongly there needs to be a right balance between austerity and growth,\u201d he said in a television interview. \u201cOverall, Europe is going to need to do a little bit better. There\u2019s room for progress.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This brought the critical remark from Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty that \u201csome\u201d in the G-7 have \u201cambiguous positions\u201d. He added, \u201cThe Americans need to be more clear where they stand on this. They seem to be wanting to encourage growth more than fiscal responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The US, however, is not a champion of fiscal expansion&#8211;the Obama administration has deepened spending cuts that are severely impacting widening sections of the American population. But it regards European austerity measures, and the resulting recession across the continent, as an impediment to US exports and growth prospects.<\/p>\n<p>America\u2019s chief opponent in Europe is Germany and clashes between the two powers during last month\u2019s spring meeting of the  <\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on : <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2013\/05\/13\/econ-m13.html\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Divisions between major powers dominate G-7 meeting\">World Socialist Web Site<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 By Nick Beams 13 May 2013 A meeting of G-7 finance ministers held outside London over the weekend was marked by widening differences over economic policy and concerns about the implications of the \u201cquantitative easing\u201d monetary policies of the world\u2019s major central banks. The differences over economic policy are being fuelled by the fact [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-33026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}