G20 Nations Brush Off Goals by Geithner

G20 officials aren’t likely to accept US proposals to better monitor exchange rates along with trade deficits and surpluses, an insider tells Reuters. Timothy Geithner had hoped to set numerical targets for surpluses and deficits as well as "norms" on currency rate policy. "Right now, there is no established sense of what's fair,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

But other members, among them India, China, and Germany, rejected the ideas. “Macroeconomic fine-tuning and quantitative targets are not the right approach in our view,” said Germany’s economy minister. “I am not sure that this will be supported by very many emerging economies,” noted an Indian finance official. A Russian finance minister, meanwhile, held that it was up to the US to first take action on its own deficit.