WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush’s top advisers on financial markets are pledging to continue working to correct the mistakes that have led to more than a year of severe market turmoil.
The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, which includes Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, issued a report Friday that said while many reforms have been implemented, more needs to be done.
Paulson says the group has been working to reduce the likelihood that past mistakes will be repeated.
“This progress report demonstrates that as we work to address the immediate issues at hand, we also have been working to reduce the likelihood that mistakes of the past will be repeated,” Paulson said in a statement.
The 28-page report was a follow-up to the initial version the working group issued in March that reviewed the administration’s initial response to a severe credit crisis which struck markets in August 2007. That crisis, which originated in subprime mortgage lending, has grown more virulent in recent days and proved resistant to repeated efforts by the administration and the Federal Reserve to deal with the problems.
Market turbulence has increased this week with the Dow Jones industrial average suffering a series of huge declines that have wiped out $8.7 trillion in wealth over the past year.
The president’s working group, which was created after the 1987 stock market crash, serves as crisis managers for the government during periods of extreme market turmoil.
The new report said that significant progress had been made in such areas as reforming the process for originating home loans, and in strengthening financial institutions’ risk management practices.
Paulson said the new report would serve as the basis for discussions with international finance ministers. Paulson and Bernanke will serve as hosts for a meeting of finance ministers and central bank presidents from the Group of Seven major industrial countries on Friday.
Bush will meet with the group on Saturday, a discussion that was added this week as turmoil in the financial markets intensified.
|
No Related links found
|
