G7 targets causes of market crises

By Brian Love

TOKYO (Reuters) - Beyond the immediate challenge of crisis containment, the G7 industrialized nations promised over the weekend to fix the financial market faultlines that are destabilizing the global economy.

Promising was the easy part.

The next few months will tell whether the G7 governments can set aside their differences and work together to tackle the root causes of the market turmoil that snowballed out of the United States last August.

"G7 credibility will now be more about putting what was said into practice than just saying it," said a government official who attended the meeting where finance ministers produced the pledges in Tokyo on Saturday.

"They've got a few months to show they can do it."

The finance ministers of the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Canada acknowledged that the economic outlook had deteriorated markedly in recent months, even if they stopped short of predicting a U.S. recession.

They vowed to make banks and other financial market players operate in a more open and accountable fashion, following the debt-default crisis in the U.S. sub-prime mortgage market and the global market turmoil it has spawned.

ANOTHER FINE MESS