Prime Mnister Gordon Brown Greets President Barack Obama

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama are shown shaking hands at the G-20 London Summit on Thursday April 2, 2009. Prime Minister Brown did an excellent job chairing the Summit meetings and coordinating an effective London Summit Communique that incredibly documented significant commitment details and was agreed to by all 20 World Leaders. Brown's efforts to arrange the London Summit and specifically the Summit's promotion of constructive progress to achieving a stronger commitment by all nations to tackle Climate Change was exemplary.

President Barack Obama was also a star of the Summit and his efforts yesterday to bring collective cooperation amongst all of the Leaders speaks for his calibre and also the quality of the effort from the other individual Leaders who were in London representing their countries.  Both French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were excellent at their insistence that the G-20 Summit had real substance and made a difference, particularly as regards improving global financial regulations and making progress towards tackling Climate Change.

The G-20 Leaders agreed in the London Communique to restore confidence, jobs and growth - repair the global financial system's lending capability, strengthen global financial regulations (New Financial Stability Board - FSB), fund International Financial Institutions to create stability, promote global trade (reject protectionism), ensure a fair equitable distribution of recovery efforts towards all nations, and most importantly accelerate the response to Climate Change with an international plan to be established at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. In total, the G-20 agreed to provide $1.1 trillion in additional funds for mutually beneficial financial stability, growth, and jobs initiatives, and also for the support of developing economies and the poorest countries.