'I Take Responsibility': Obama's G-20 Confession - by Marc Hujer, Wolfgang Reuter and Christoph Schwennicke
At the G-20 in London, world leaders tried their hand at global governance. The minutes of their final, decisive session reveal how hard it is to reach a worldwide consensus. But the group did break new ground: US President Barack Obama admitted his country was responsible for the current crisis.
Obama's confession may go down in world history as one of the greatest statements ever made. The US president is accepting responsibility for the beginning of one of the worst economic crises of the last century. By doing so, he has admitted that one of the excesses of the American way of life -- the insatiable craving for huge profits -- has brought the world to the brink of disaster. The others may have played their part, but the origins lie in the US. The fact that Obama has now admitted this sends a strong signal of hope to the world, perhaps the strongest to emerge from the G-20 summit in London last Wednesday and Thursday. Such an admission could begin to pave the way towards rectifying the situation.
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