Staff writer While Japan and the United States exited the 20th century as the world's two largest economic powers, Tokyo and Washington had little to celebrate when they crossed the threshold into the new century.
In February in Palermo, Sicily, finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of Seven major economic powers acknowledged that a U.S. economic slowdown was crystallizing and urged Japan to speed up banks' disposal of bad loans and revamp its financial sector.
The state of the world economy, however, continued to deteriorate in subsequent months and Group of Eight leaders pledged in their meeting in July in Genoa, Italy, to use all means available to avert a global recession.