Europe Agrees to Take It One Financial Crisis at a Time

Leaders of Europe’s four biggest economies did not settle on a unified plan for tackling the financial crisis, the Washington Post reports. Instead, each country will deal with banking problems as they crop up. While France’s Nicolas Sarkozy hoped for a Europe-wide plan, British and German leaders were opposed to a single safety-net fund.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested that governments were willing to step into the financial fray individually as the leaders called for strict market regulation. They agreed on the need for a world summit “at the earliest possible date” to update the international economic system organized in 1944. The crisis “is a worldwide problem, and it should get a worldwide response,” Sarkozy said.