Australia has set three goals for the G20 leaders’  meeting in London on Thursday.

“The way forward for the summit is clear,” the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, told finance journalists in Tokyo yesterday.

“To deal with the problem of toxic assets.

“To maintain the impetus for fiscal stimulus measures.

“And to resist trade and financial protectionism.”

Several European nations, including Germany, Spain and the Czech Republic have been distinctly sceptical on the issue of  stimulus measures.

However, as the Finance Minister Linsday Tanner pointed out yesterday, the German leader, Angela Merkel, had indulged in a little fiscal stimulus, herself, when economic circumstances showed that was necessary.

And Mr Swan, at least, is optimistic.

He said the “groundwork” for the G20 Leaders’ Meeting has already been done.

And governments around the world had already agreed that fiscal stimulus would be necessary this year.

“And we have agreed to have the IMF assess what further stimulus might be needed beyond what has been agreed for 2009,”  he said.

He said, too, that the G20’s agenda is “very broad” as “it needs to be.”

Mr Swan has also been selling Australia’s “underlying resilience” to Japanese investors, while he has been in Tokyo.

He said that four of the world’s 11 most stable banks are, in fact, Australian.

The Federal government is offering a new tax break, for an estimated 1.5 million small business owners in Australia, self funded retirees and small superannuation funds.

The new break, which will cost the government an estimated $720 million, is meant to boost small business cash flows, during the present crisis.

The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, said:”What we’re going to do is reduce the uplift factor that applies to PSAYG tax instalments that are paid on a quarterly basis.

But Mr  Swan also confirmed the Prime Minister’s earlier admission that Australia will now, almost certainly, slide into recession.

In fact, we are already at least half way there.

The Statistician reported that the Australian economy contracted by 0.5 per cent in the final three months of last year.

Two consecutive quarters of negative growth make a recession, on most economists’ reckoning.

Speaking to reporters over the weekend, Mr Swan said the government is expecting fresh forecasts from both the OECD and the World Bank this week.

“…and if there are substantial downgrades there, I think it will be almost inevitable that Australia will experience a period of negative growth,” he added.

This admission, that a recession is imminent, is very close to one the Prime Minister made, before he left Australia to visit Washington and London.

Mr Swan said this was the main reason why the tax break is being offered.

Byt the way it is being made is complex.

The passages below, taken from the official announcement, spell it out.

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Who will receive the reduction?

The PAYG instalment reduction applies to taxpayers whose PAYG instalments are adjusted for growth in GDP (GDP-adjustment method).

This method bases instalment amounts on the previous year’s taxable income, uplifted by a GDP adjustment factor.

This adjustment factor reflects nominal GDP growth over the previous two calendar years and is intended to calculate tax instalments payable based on expected profit growth.

However, as the adjustment factor is calculated on previous growth rates it will overstate expected profit growth where economic and business conditions have declined quickly.

Taxpayers using this method include those carrying on a business and those with investment income, for example self-funded retirees, and wage and salary earners with investment income subject to the PAYG instalment system.

In the main, small businesses, individuals and small superannuation funds are eligible to pay their instalments quarterly using the GDP-adjustment method.

How will it apply?

For the 2009-10 income year, the adjustment factor calculated under the tax law will be set at 2 per cent.

In accordance with the existing law, taxpayers may still vary their quarterly tax instalments, if they consider their income is expected to be lower or higher than the amount determined by the Commissioner of Taxation using the 2 per cent adjustment factor.

This reduction does not apply to taxpayers who calculate their instalments based on the instalment rate notified by the Australian Taxation Office. Their payments will automatically adjust

Barack Obama’s decision to expand the US military commitment to Afghanistan can only damage the chances of a successful outcome from the G20 meeting in London this week.

And that would be a tragedy.

The US, along with its allies including Australia,  has been fighting terrorists  in that country for more than seven years,  since the invasion in 2001.  But there has been little clear progress, to show for it.

Wars are expensive, both financially and in terms of political capital.

As a new, fresh US President, just two months into office,  Obama would, usually,  have  have carried great prestige and power into this week’s meeting.  Especially as his election raised hopes  throughout the world.

The late Kim Beazley senior once put the dilemma Obama now faces, very sharply, saying that getting involved in a land war in Asia is the “second worst military decision it is possible to make.”

“After invading Russia in winter.”

Beazley Snr., was criticising the US in Vietnam, at that time.  But his words still have power, today.

The Taliban’s decision to protect Osama Bin Laden, which led to the US invansion, was certainly stupid.

The US had been attacked by al Queada – and certainly had a right to retaliate.

But fighting unwinnable wars, as the US now arguably is, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, is not a clever response.

Nor is sending in an additional 21,ooo troops, when a war bogs down, as Obama is now doing in Afghanisatan.

Both wars are being fought on the US national credit card.

And that is already heavily loaded.

President Obama is taking a clear, financial strategy to the G20 meeting in London.

He wants other nations to follow the US and Australian examples, and stimulate their economies  to lift not just themselves, but the entire world, out of  recession.

But the clear fact that the present recession  started  with the excesses of  US financiers, is enough,  by itself, to make Obama’s position at the G20 summit difficult.

His decision to commit more US troops to Afghanistan will, inevitably, add to those difficulties.

Especially as several European leaders leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, are already deeply suspicious of  both stimulus packages  and long pointless wars, anyway.

Mirek Topolanek’s inflamatory charge that Barack Obama’s stimulus measures put the world on “the road to hell” is threatening to  split  the G20, on the eve of its meeting in London this weekend, to tackle the global economic crisis.

Especially as the EU President delivered his attack just days before the G20 tries to settle on a united strategy to tackle the global economic crisis.

There are mitigating factors, of course.  The Czech President is a desperate man.  His rule, in his homeland, is expiring, as a result of a successful no confidence motion in his government. And that will, also bring his six month term, in the rotating  EU presidency to an end.

Mr Topolanek said EU leaders had been disturbed at a summit in Brussels last week to hear calls from Tim Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, for more aggressive policies to fight the global downturn.

Then he said:-“The US Treasury secretary talks about permanent action and we, at our spring council, were quite alarmed at that . . . The US is repeating mistakes from the 1930s, such as wide-ranging stimuluses, protectionist tendencies and appeals, the Buy American campaign, and so on, all these steps, their combination and their permanency, are the road to hell.”

Mr Topolanek was speaking at a European parliament session in Strasbourg.

His speech threw European Union hopes for better relations with the US thrown into chaos. His attack also threw a dark shadow over next week’s G20 meeting.

It  also came barely a week before Mr Obama is due to arrive in Europe on his first official visit as US president. And it put the 27-nation EU clearly on a collision course with Washington.

The crude attack also compounded the confusion that has engulfed EU policy after the Czech leader lost a no-confidence vote in the country’s parliament on Tuesday, forcing him to offer his government’s resignation midway through its six-month EU presidency.

The Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who was in Washington yesterday, refused to comment on the Czech leader’s attack, saying he had not heard what Mr Topolanek had said. US officials also refused to  comment on them.

But the Obama administration says it took great pains to ensure that the Buy American provisions in the $US787bn (€579bn) stimulus that the president signed into law last month were consistent with World Trade Organisation rules. It followed, therefore, that any attempt to make them permanent would continue to be consistent with WTO rules.

But other leaders of EU member states, including Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, also disagree with US calls for big fiscal stimuli to battle the recession. However they have couched their opposition in more diplomatic language than Mr Topolanek’s.

Relations between the Obama administration and Mr Topolanek’s government have been delicate in recent weeks because of signals from Washington that Mr Obama may reassess plans to deploy parts of a US anti-missile shield in the Czech Republic, a project to which the Topolanek government has been committed.

Mr Obama has vigorously opposed the view that the Great Depression was caused by too much spending, rather than too little, a view held by a small handful of right wing economists.

Some of the now confessed bastardry of Australian banks has now been exposed, at the highest possible level.

The Reserve Bank Governor, Glenn Stevens, chose his words carefully – and spoke politely – when he did that late yesterday.

But those who heard him had no doubts about what he was really saying.

He was laying into Australia’s big four banks.

The Governor’s speech, clearly, followed years of frustration, dealing with the deep conservatism and self-serving policies, of Australia’s big four banks.

True, they haven’t acted as badly  as their reckless counterparts in the United States, who played a major role in precipitating the present global economic crisis, through their reckless lending and subsequent complex cover-ups.

But Mr Stevens’ catalogue of what they have done – and failed to do – makes serious reading, anyway.

The governor says, for example, that the big four banks have effectively lumbered Australian shoppers and businesses with a cumbersome payment system, whose design is at least thirty years out of date.

He said other countries, including Britain, Canada and the United States have done much better, at keeping up with both changing – and rapidly advancing – technologies.

Bad as that, undoubtedly is, Mr Stevens’ criticism of the big banks, which he regulates, didn’t stop there.

He noted too, that if the big four banks ever saw a chance to freeze small rivals out of the system, they would take it, regardless of the damage it did to competition in Australia’s financial system.

But Mr Stevens made it clear, too, that he also had his reservations about the smaller players, in Australia’s financial system.

“For example, small institutions would only consider a system that allowed to form fee-free networks among themselves, otherwise they would be at a competitive disadvantage to the big banks, with their large ATM networks,” Mr Stevens said.

He effectively confirmed, too, that the Reserve Bank had been forced to drag the big four, kicking and screaming, into the recent reform of Australia’s ATM system.

The new  head of the National Australia Bank, Cameron Clyne, boasted yesterday, that as boy who grew up in Sydney’s western suburb of  Penrith,  he was pretty used to “people telling it like it is.”

And he added: “There are issues where many people think the banks can be bastards”.

Mr Clyne might well have hesitated, before saying that, though, if  he had realised that Mr Stevens would soon, effectively, join those critics.

That happened just a few hours after Mr Clyne spoke.

Are you planning an e-business?

Selling your great product  from home?  Or, perhaps, promoting the beautiful attractions of your district to potential tourists.

These can be great ideas.

But there is one thing you must take into account.

That is potential fraud.

A senior Reserve Bank executive, Philip Lowe, is  sounding the the warning.

And as an Assistant Governor of the Bank, with special responsibilty for Australia’s financial system, Mr Lowe is, definitely, in the know.

He says online credit card fraud, in which the merchant does not actually see the customer’s card, is now the most rapidly rising kind of credit card fraud in Australia.

“Almost half the fraud on credit cards occurs in situations where the merchant does not physically see the card,” Mr Lowe said, in a speech he delivered yesterday.

He said, too, that this kind of fraud had increased by around 50 per cent over the past year.

“If this trend were to continue, it could undermine consumer confidence in transacting business on line,” Mr Lowe said.

To say nothing of merchant confidence, in this increasingly common kind of commerce.

Mr Lowe said more needs to be done to offer consumers highly secure payment options.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has flown into a toxic debt storm in Washington.

He arrived there, for his first meeting with the new US President, Barack Obama,  just as the Obama administration launched an ambitious scheme  to sell toxic assets to private investors.

To describe the scheme, that the US Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, is promoting merely as dangerous would be a huge understatement.

Mr Geithner is promising that the US government would lend the private investors up to 95 per cent of the money they would pay for those assets.

The scheme, which has been tried before, has its attractions.  Particularly for those private investors.

If those – presently  despised -  assets do turn out to have some residual value, after the present US recession ends, they could make big profits, through such purchases.

But if those assets remain effectively worthless, those investors could, as the Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman warns, simply “walk away from their debts.”

Heads, the investors win.  Tails, US taxpayers lose.

Geithner says his scheme would “use the expertise of the market” to set a value on those, now toxic, assets.

But Krugman recalled that a previous Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, proposed a similar “cash for trash” scheme, six months ago, when George W Bush was still president.  His idea was  quietly abandoned later.

Mr Rudd has a better plan, in his briefcase.

He will try to persuade President Obama, to clear the way for China to be given a bigger say in the International Monetary Fund, at the G20 Leaders’ Summit, next weekend.

China does, after all, have vast cash deposits, which are  presently held in US government securities.

A little of that money might be made to work harder, pulling the world out of its recession, if the conservative Chinese government could be persuaded to make a few, well-placed, investments.

The Chinese, though, won’t be tempted by the Geithner plan.  They know a toxic idea, when they see it.

The real issue, here, is that the global crisis is now advancing so rapidly, that hundreds of thousands of US -and other – jobs are being lost each week.

This is no time for the great and the good to be pushing dangerously unworkable schemes.

That just wastes very valuable time.

Expect a really  tough Federal budget in May.

That tip comes from a usually reliable source, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

Speaking in a television interview yesterday, Mr Rudd left no room at all for doubt about that.

He had been asked if the budget would have to be tough, this year.

“Really tough,” Rudd replied.

“Because what you have got on one side of it is collapsing government revenues, coming straight off the back of the global economic recession.”

Rudd said the same thing is also happening with every other budget around the world.

“The Chinese budget has gone into deficit, I’m advised,” Rudd added.

The Prime Minister also signalled that Australia, too, is likely to slide into recession.

Indeed, figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that the country is already half-way there, with its economy contracting 0.5 per cent in the final three months of last year.

Rudd noted that the International Monetary Fund is now predicting that the global economy will contract by between 0.5 and 1 per cent this year.

He said the revision, which had produced those figures, had been a big one.

“…and therefore it does have direct roll-on consequences for Australian growth, employment and the budget,” Rudd said.

“That’s just as night follows day.”

Wayne Swan is warning that Australia now faces a much deeper and longer global downturn than previously expected.

The Treasurer was commenting on the latest IMF forecasts.

The IMF has forecast that the global economy will contract by ½ to 1 per cent in 2009, before staging a modest recovery in 2010.

This is a downward revision of 1 to 1½ percentage points from the IMF January World Economic Outlook. That was released only seven weeks ago.

Mr Swan said this shows just how rapid and severe this global recession has become.

The IMF also expects advanced economies will suffer deep recessions in 2009.

It says GDP across advanced economies now expected to fall by over 3percent in this year.

Emerging and developing economies are expected to grow by just 1½ to 2½ per cent in 2009, compared with growth of more than 6 per cent in 2008.

Mr Swan said the IMF had also seen massive falls in economic activity in the final quarter of 2008, with global GDP falling by an unprecedented 5 per cent, on an annualised. Basis.

On that basis, growth in advanced economies had contracted by 7 per in that time.

The United States had seen its economy shrink by 6 per cent.

And Japan’s GDP had fallen by a massive 13 per cent.

“Many emerging economies also contracted sharply due to falling external demand, tight financial conditions and tumbling commodity prices,” Mr Swan said.

Kevin Rudd wasn’t pulling his punches in Federal parliament yesterday.

The Prime Minister said the opposition’s vote, to reject the so-called alcopops tax in the Senate, would have “an immediate impact on hospital emergency wards throughout Australia.”

These popular soft drinks, spiked with alcohol, are a favourite with Australia’s teenagers, especially girls.

And the government deliberately made them more expensive, in April   last year, when it started collecting the alcopops tax

The Senate’s  decision will  blow a $1.6 billion hole in Federal budgets, over four years.

“Those opposite wanted to give a tax gift to the alcohol industry,”  Rudd thundered, on the last day of parliament’s autumn sittings.

The  vote of Family First Senator, Steve Fielding, was critical.  It decided the issue.  But political analysts were particularly puzzled by it.  It will make Friday and Saturday nights much more worrying, for thousands of Australian families, with teenage sons or daughters.

Senator Fielding said he voted to block the tax  because the government would not agree to ban alcohol advertising during television sports programs.

And  the government might well be seen as obdurate, on that point.

The net effect of the Senate’s vote, though, will undoubtedly be that Australian teenagers will consume more alcohol spiked drinks.

And the Prime Minister is right.  That will be dangerous.

The Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, retaliated, by moving a motion of no confidence in the Rudd government, over its handling of the global economic crisis.

But, predictably, that went nowhere.

The government doesn’t have the numbers it needs in the Senate, to push its legislation through.

But it does have a majority in the lower house, the House of Representatives.

And it is not reluctant to use it.

The Federal government believes its decision to to curb executive pay is well timed.

Especially as it coincides with an outbreak of public anger in the United States, at big bonuses that the American International Group decided to pay its executives, even though the big insurer is already on taxpayer funded life support.

So far, there are few examples of quite such flagrant abuse of taxpayer funds in Australia.

But one case comes close.

Recent  reports suggest that the retiring CEO of Pacific Brands, Paul Moore, is to receive a $3.4 million termination payment.  That raised public eyebrows.

Especially as Mr Moore’s departure, from December this year, followed the company’s decision in February to close its factories, throughout Australia, and move its manufacturing operations overseas.

More than 1,800 Australian workers, including many in regional areas, were sacked as a result.

The company has received millions of dollars worth of support from the public purse, over the years.

The government’s curbs will start with big termination payments, that are often called golden handshakes.

At present, shareholders don’t have to be consulted unless these termination payments exceed seven times a director’s annual base pay.

But under the new arrangements, that the Treasurer Wayne Swan announced yesterday, shareholder approval would be required for any termination payment exceeding one year’s base pay.

“The government’s reforms will empower shareholders to more easily reject such payments, when they are not in the interests of the company, the shareholders or the community,” the Treasurer said.

Mr Swan said these payments had become “more common and – in some cases – more obscene.”

The government has also ordered a broad ranging inquiry into excessive executive pay.

These decisions will certainly attract criticism from the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who recently described Kevin Rudd as “the wealthiest Prime Minister Australia has ever had.”

But the issue will also be a difficult one for the Liberals to handle.

They are often accused of being too close to big business.

Mr Turnbull, himself, drew sharp criticism last month, after he said Mr Rudd had been “enriched” by the neo-liberal policies, that the Prime Minister had criticised, in an essay.

But the issue is tricky, for Labor, too.

Especially as Mr Rudd’s wife, Therese Rein, a highly successful business-woman, might, herself, be affected by the new curbs.

The Corporate Law Minister, Nick Sherry, who announced the, inquiry, said it would be conducted by the Productivity Commission.

He was blunt in his condemnation of executive greed.

“Unrestrained greed in the financial sector has led to the biggest global recession since World War II,” Senator Sherry said.

Mr Swan said, too, that the public had been “rightly offended by excessive golden handshakes, in which directors and executives were rewarded for poor company performance.”

The government is also broadening its definition of termination payments, so that they cannot be exempted on technicalities.

But the new laws will not be retrospective.

Mr Swan said existing termination contracts would be allowed to proceed.

Another minister, Senator Nick Sherry was even more blunt.

He said the global economic crisis had been ” precipitated by executive greed.

And he said that crisis: “…has now spread across the world and instigated significant slowdowns in the US, Europe, China and caused more than 50 banks to collapse.”

Millions of jobs had been lost, as a result, he added.

Senator Sherry announced, too, that Professor Allan Fels, a former chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, would join the Productivity Inquiry into executive pay levels, as an associate commissioner.

He said Professor Fels would bring “a wealth of experience” to the role.

Professor Fels has worked in the area of competition and consumer regulation for 16 years, Senator Sherry said.

The Senator promised, too, that the inquiry would be broad ranging.

“There is significant community concern about excessive pay practices, particularly at a time when many Australian families are being hit by the global recession,” he declared.

He said the inquiry would also examine international trends and responses to the problems of excessive risk taking and corporate greed.

“The Rudd government has made it clear that it will examine all workable options with regards to executive remuneration,” Senator Sherry said.

And he promised that the public would be given plenty of opportunity to make its views known.

“All interested parties are invited to make a submission,” he said.

The commission will be required to report by the end of the year.

The government has asked it to study trends in executive pay, both in Australia and overseas.

It also ordered the commission to report on the effectiveness of existing laws, for the oversight of executive pay.

The government said, specifically, that loans to executives, which do not have to be repaid, would come within the scope of the inquiry he ordered.

Senator Sherry also said that the Productivity Commission would look, in particular, at the interests of Australians who now have big stakes in the nation’s major companies, through the shareholdings of their superannuation funds.

Consumer confidence has plunged in Australia – to levels not  seen  since the last deep recession, in the early 1990s.

The Westpac leading index, which indicates the likely pace of economic activity over the coming three to nine months, slumped to -3.1 per cent in January.  That’s well below its long term trend rate of +3.2 per cent.

Senior   Westpac economist Matthew Hassan said the index is now in “deeply negative territory.”

And Mr Hassan said that is consistent with contracting economic activity.

He said the latest reading is the lowest seen on the index since August 1990, when this indicator plunged to -3.4 per cent.

“Back then, the economy had already entered what went on to become a deep, long lasting recession,” Mr Hassan said.

He said falling profits, lower share prices, slowing productivity growth and a slide in dwelling approvals had all contributed to the fall.

“The only positive contribution has been from higher overtime worked,” Mr Hassan said.

Meanwhile the Federal Treasurer, Wayne Swan, warned that the Australian economy has probably not hit its low point yet.

“It doesn’t appear so,” he told a radio interviewer.

But Mr Swan said decisions taken at the G20 Finance Ministers’ meeting in London last weekend should help to put a floor under the present global downturn.

He pledged that the government would use every tool of public policy to support growth in the Australian economy.

Australian share traders will start today with a strong lead from the United States.

The Dow Jones index was 101.55 points higher at 7,318.52 points, at 4pm New York time.

And local trader’s spirits were already strong,  with the local market  rising 3.1 per cent yesterday to a one month high.

However some analysts in the US were warning that a pause in the current 10 day bull run in America is now likely.

A rise in housing approvals, particularly for apartments, and improved results signalled the troubled Citicorp group ecouraged US share traders.

Hints that the Reserve Bank will shortly cut local interest rates again also encouraged local traders yesterday.

The bank said  yesterday that the cuts it had already made, along with measures the Federal government has taken to stimulate the economy are having an impact.

But it warned, too, that there are still serious weaknesses in the global economy.

“The economic data that had been released over the past month indicated very weak conditions in the December quarter in most regions,” the bank said, in the minutes of its March 3 meeting, which it published yesterday.

It explained, also, that part of its reason for leaving its marker interest rate at 3.25 per cent this month, was to “leave adequate flexibility for policy at future meetings.”

That was taken as a clear sign that the bank was embarrassed, to an extent, by its decision to keep rates on hold, even though the Australian economy was shrinking.

But the Australian Bureau of Statistics did not publish news of that contraction – of 0.5 per cent over the final three months of last year – until one day after the Reserve Bank had announced its decision to keep rates on hold.

Expect further rate cuts in the months ahead.

The minutes of the Reserve Bank board meeting, held on March 3,  show that this is, indeed, very likely.

Indeed, they almost amounted to an apology for not cutting rates, earlier this month.

At that time, board members decided to keep rates on hold.

But fortune does not favour the nervous.

And in this case, the Reserve Bank board members, who decided to play it safe, at their meeting on March 3, were to be severely embarrassed, just one day later.

That’s when, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that the Australian economy shrank by 0.5 per cent, over the final three months of  last year.

Almost apologetically, the minutes of that last meeting, which have just been released,  say that board members had, indeed,  considered both cutting rates and keeping them on hold.

“Members could see reasonable cases for both courses of action,” they say.

The minutes also confirm that the board members’  decision was close.

But, they add:-”on balance, they judged that having having made a major change to monetary policy over the preceding several meetings in anticipation of weak economic conditions, the best course for this meeting was to leave the cash rate unchanged,” the minutes said.

The penultimate sentence, in the five pages of minutes,  though, still reads very  like an apology,  for the board’s flaccid decision.

“Members believed this (leaving rates on hold) would leave adequate flexibility for policy at future meetings,” it said.

The embarrassment, for the Reserve Bank governor, Glenn Stevens, continues.

The world’s developed countries are determined to tackle the deepening global economic crisis, but they can’t agree on how this should be done.

This became evident yesterday, when G20 finance ministers, meeting in England, adjourned without issuing a clear statement of intent.

However both President Obama’s representative, Timothy Geithner, and Australia’s Treasurer, Wayne Swan,  emerged from the meeting, encouraged by it.

“The world is with us on this,’ Mr Geithner said.

“We will do what is necessary to get the economy moving again,” he added.

Mr Swan was also upbeat.

“It was a very encouraging outcome,” he said.

“I saw a resolve that I haven’t seen before,” Mr Swan said.

However Mr Swan admitted that “there are some reservations” about how the crisis should be tackled.

France and Germany, in particular, are making little secret of the fact that they are worried about rising government debt levels. They are arguing for tighter regulation of global financial markets.

Mr Swan said different circumstances in different countries might dictate different approaches to the crisis.

He warned, though, that the world must deal with the toxic assets, held by many banks, deliver fiscal stimulus and boost the International Monetary Fund, so that it can help less developed nations deal with the consequences of the crisis.

The Finance Ministers’ meeting was meant to pave the way for a G20 Leaders’ meeting, which President Obama, Kevin Rudd and other world leaders will attend, in London on April 2.