President Barack Obama greets President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva  of Brazil on March 14, 2009, in the Oval Office. After a meeting on the G-20 agenda, with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Brasília, on March 26, 2009, the former trade union leader said: "This crisis was caused by no black man or woman, or by no indigenous person, or by no poor person. This crisis was fostered and boosted by irrational behaviour of some people that are white, blue-eyed. Before the crisis, they looked like they knew everything about economics, and they have demonstrated they know nothing about economics." Challenged about the claims, he said: "I am not acquainted with a single black banker."

Gordon Brown said on Monday, that there was a lot of work left to do to reach agreement at Thursday’s G-20 summit as he scaled back ambitions for a Bretton Woods II, named after the location in New Hampshire, where agreement was reached on post-war financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Brown had also in recent times spoken of a global “new deal.” President Barack Obama will arrive in London this evening for the summit of the 20 leading developed and emerging economies.

The Economist recently said, that the last time a global economic summit was held against a dire backdrop of capsized banks and sinking economies, a new American president was in the White House and Labour’s first prime minister at 10 Downing Street. Hope abounded that the world’s leaders could agree in London on concerted action to turn things round.

But the World Economic Conference attended by delegates from 64 nations in 1933 was an abject failure. Franklin D. Roosevelt chose not to show up but sent a “bombshell” message that sabotaged the temporary stabilisation of currencies, seen as a crucial first step towards renewed international co-operation. Far from reversing the move towards economic nationalism, the summit marked a further staging-post along the way to it. For Ramsay MacDonald, the British prime minister who by then headed a cross-party government, the event brought chagrin rather than glory.

On Monday, Gordon Brown and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said they believe leaders will be able to reach an agreement on measures aimed at solving the economic crisis.

In a joint press conference on Monday, Brown said they had committed to greater bilateral cooperation on security, and discussed how they would work together on economic issues.

They told reporters that although there was still work to do, it would be possible for leaders to reach an agreement on Thursday.

Brown said: “The world is coming together and the results of this work will show that global problems - because these are global problems - require global solutions and I believe that the world will rise to the challenge.”

Rudd responded: “Progress has been achieved, progress will be achieved in London and further progress will be necessary as the year progresses, as more data emerges about the challenges in 2010.”

The two leaders emphasised the “close relationship” between their two countries and praised each other’s efforts to develop an agreement on the future of the global economy.

Brown said Australian proposals to restructure the banking system would be very important to the discussions this week.

Brown conceded the summit was part of a process rather than an event. “I have got to do a lot of work in the next two days getting countries to agree to proposals that we have been working on for some time,” he said, while his spokesman said the London summit was “very much part of a process”. He added: “We are nearer to its beginning than to its end.”

Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, said on Monday he still feared the London summit would produce “grand declarations” but little concrete action.

European countries have been resisting calls from the US for more stimulus spending.

Commitments to fight protectionism, to clean up bank balance sheets, agreement to to provide new funding for the IMF and to achieve global regulatory convergence, are on the agenda

The US and Europe are united in their desire for far-reaching regulatory reform to strengthen the global financial system, Tim Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, told the Financial Times.

Geithner said that the“US has a huge interest in acting quickly and comprehensively to use this opportunity to develop an international consensus on how to make the system more robust and stable.” 

In an interview with the FT, he rejected the notion that the US is only interested in fiscal stimulus while continental Europeans want regulatory reform. He said all G20 nations agreed on the need for a strong regulatory response to the crisis and on the broad shape it should take.

“Relative to where we were in 1998 during the Asian crisis, there is a much stronger degree of consensus,” he said.“The gap between where the French are, where the Germans are, where the Americans are, where the Chinese are – it is a very small gap.”