In the face of an ever-worsening global financial crisis, the Group of Seven major economies will likely reaffirm Friday their readiness to cooperate with each other to ward off a worldwide depression, but they are not expected to pledge any concrete action, observers say.
Former senior Japanese financial officials say the G7 nations are preoccupied with their day-to-day emergency responses to the quickly expanding panic and will stop short of announcing collective measures, such as coordinated interest rate cuts by their central banks.
The financial ministers and central bank governors from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States are poised to meet in Washington at a time when the world is exposed to what is believed to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s.