What Obama told the other G-20 leaders In a letter last week to fellow G-20 members, who are holding an economic summit this weekend in Canada, President Obama said: "Our highest priority in Toronto must be to safeguard and strengthen the recovery."
The letter included a message evidently aimed at European countries that are slashing their budgets, mindful of the recent, destabilizing consequences of excessive public debt in Greece and Portugal. "We must ... learn from the consequential mistakes of the past when stimulus was too quickly withdrawn and resulted in renewed economic hardships and recession," Obama said.
The G-20 was created in 1999, in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Members include the eight leading industrialized nations (the G-8) -- the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia -- plus Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the European Union.
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