The G20 leaders met in Washington in November 2008 to discuss the challenges facing the world economy. They’ll meet again at the London Summit to build on the commitments made in Washington and set a course for world economic stability and recovery.

Their Summit Declaration points to the search for higher yields without an adequate appreciation of risks as one of the root causes ofthe crisis. The development of increasingly complex and opaque financial products and excessive leverage combined to createvulnerabilities in the system. They also point to a number ofunderlying factors, including inconsistent and insufficiently coordinated macroeconomic policies, and inadequate structural reforms,which led to unsustainable global macroeconomic outcomes. Together,these developments ultimately resulted in severe market disruption.

The Summit Declaration sets out a broad policy response, based oncloser macroeconomic cooperation, in order to restore growth, avoidnegative spillovers and support emerging market economies anddeveloping countries. G20 countries will:

• take whatever further actions are necessary to stabilise the financial system;
• recognise the importance of monetary policy support, as deemed appropriate to domestic conditions;
• use fiscal measures to stimulate domestic demand to rapid effect,as appropriate, while maintaining a policy framework conducive tofiscal sustainability;
• re-affirm the importance of the development assistance commitments already made;
• help emerging and developing economies gain access to finance incurrent difficult financial conditions, including through liquidityfacilities and programme support. Leaders stressed the InternationalMonetary Fund’s (IMF) important role in crisis response;
• encourage the World Bank and other Multilateral Development Banksto use their full capacity in support of their development agenda, andwelcome the recent introduction of new facilities by the World Bank inthe areas of infrastructure and trade finance; and
• ensure that the IMF, World Bank and other Multilateral DevelopmentBanks have sufficient resources to continue playing their role inovercoming the crisis.

In addition to these actions, leaders agreed to implement reforms tostrengthen financial markets and regulatory regimes so as to avoidfuture crises.