Merkel slams imbalances issue; asks G20 to focus on financial sector reform

German chancellor Angela Merkel has decried efforts by leading economies, especially the United States and the UK, to project economic imbalances resulting from trade mismatch as an excuse to wriggle out of the financial sector reform plan.

"We cannot afford to neglect" the issue of financial market regulation, Merkel said before leaving for the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, US.
  
US president Barack Obama, on the other hand, is expected to tell world leaders that the global economy cannot continually rely on huge borrowing and spending by Americans to buy from countries like China.

In fact, the US is pushing ahead with the buzzwords "balanced and sustainable," in a bid to make global financial imbalances the central issue of the summit of the world's 20 major economies at Pittsburgh.

Addressing the United Nations in New York on Wednesday, Obama said other nations cannot "stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone. Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."

Mike Froman, a top economic adviser to Obama, said he hoped world leaders to agree "on a framework for balanced and sustainable growth, a set of policies, parameters and process" in order to "avoid the sort of imbalances that contributed to this crisis."

Speaking in Berlin before boarding her flight, Merkel blamed the US and Britain for trying to backtrack on the issues of financial market regulation by shifting the spotlight on the export-oriented economic policies of Germany and China.