G7 Finance Ministers to Gather to Discuss Global Financial Crisis

Treasury Secretary Paulson said yesterday that governments around the world need to coordinate their actions so "the action of one country does not come at the expense of others or the stability of the system as a whole." Finance ministers from the industrialized West as well as China, Brazil and Saudi Arabia are coming to Washington in the next few days. They'll talk about interest rates, tax cuts, spending increases and the possibility of coordinating their efforts to restore confidence in the worldwide economy. But different countries face different problems, and they compete, especially with the US, which has been economically dominant for so long. We talk about hopes, as opposed to realities, as well as the decline of mutual trust and how it might be restored.