Gordon Brown warns G20 against stimulus rollback

Brown told the top G20 finance officials from the world's leading economies meeting in London that scaling back the anti-economic crisis packages would undermine "the tentative signs of recovery" that have recently emerged in the global economy.
Held in the staid surroundings of the British Treasury building in central London, the meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bankers came against the backdrop of divisions in the group over dealing with the economic crisis.
This includes differences on curbing generous bankers' bonuses, which some G20 nations see as triggering the buildup of risk in the global economy that helped to pave the wave for the economic shakeout.
At the same time, Germany, France and Japan, which have already emerged from recession, have raised beginning to wind back the mass stimulus plans, which apart from stabilizing national economies have resulted in rising budget deficits.
But Brown told the G20 finance ministers that retreating too rapidly from the fiscal plans risked resulting in "a downward lurch" in economic confidence.
The finance ministers' meeting has been called to lay the groundwork for a G20 summit later this month in the US city of Pittsburgh, which is to be hosted by President Barack Obama.
The two-day meeting comes about one year after the US investment bank Lehman Brothers imploded sending shockwaves around the world economy.
In addition to the world's leading industrial powers such as Germany, France, and Canada, the G20 also includes emerging powerhouse economies including India, China and Brazil.