WASHINGTON — World leaders are heading for a clash of expectations at this weekend’s summit on the global economic crisis.
Europeans are looking urgently for broad changes and tighter universal banking regulations. With two months left in office, President Bush isn’t ready to go nearly that far.
And there’s a limit to what he could deliver anyway, since other leaders might be hesitant to make deals with a departing administration.
President-elect Barack Obama, the leader who soon will assume the job of trying to keep the U.S. economy from capsizing, won’t even be at the table.
Saturday’s 20-nation gathering will include leaders of the Group of Eight big industrial democracies — the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Russia, Canada and Italy — as well as other major economies, including China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Australia.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, currently president of the European Union, has emphasized urgency, saying, “We are in an economic crisis. . . . We have to react, and we have no time to lose.”
Bush convened the emergency session after receiving heavy pressure from Sarkozy during a meeting last month at Camp David, Md. It is to be the first of a series of such gatherings to map out a coordinated response to the world’s worst financial crisis in decades, one that began with losses in U.S. housing markets and quickly spread overseas.
