Obama faces tough sell of agenda at G20

LONDON, April 1 (UPI) -- Group of 20 leaders in London may not like U.S. President Barack Obama's strategy for reviving the world economy but have no alternative, strategists said.

Countries in Europe and Asia that rely on the U.S. market favor Obama's spending, hoping an American rebound will revive their economies and eliminate the need for them to spend more, The New York Times reported Wednesday. Obama has suggested tougher regulations for the world banking industry and a stimulus to jump-start the global economy, which got chilly receptions by world leaders.

"Here's the central paradox. Everyone has lost confidence in the U.S. system because the more that is revealed, the more it feels as if we pursued capitalism in a very irresponsible way. But everyone is now waiting for the (United States) to bail them out," Jeffrey Garten, a professor at the Yale School of Management and a former Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration, told the Times.

One of Obama's biggest challenges may be convincing summit participants that the United States is committed to recovery but not to the unchecked consumption that abetted its financial crisis, Gerten said.

"The irony," Garten said, "is that most of our partners, after berating us for being irresponsible and greedy, want to return to the era when American consumers supported the world, when we spent too much and saved too little."

Obama also will have to convince leaders he understands what when wrong domestically and abroad, "that we care how it affects (other countries) and that we are working to fix it," David Lipton, Obama's special assistant for international economic affairs, said to the Times.