President Obama followed and here are some of his remarks.
Barack Obama, US President
“As somebody who grew up on an island, I can tell you I feel right at home. It is appropriate and important that held this summit in the Caribbean. The energy, the dynamism, the diversity of the Caribbean people inspire us all. They are such an important part of what we share in common as a hemisphere.
I think everybody recognizes that we come together at a critical moment for the people of the Americas. Our well being has set back by a historic economic crisis, our safety is endangered by a broad range of threats, but this peril can be eclipsed by the promise of a new prosperity and personal security and the protection of liberty and justice for all the people our hemisphere. That is the future we can build together but only if we move forward with a new sense partnership.
We will work with you to ensure that the Inter-American Development Bank takes the necessary step to increase its level of lending and to carefully study the needs for recapitalization in the future and we recognize we have a special responsibility as one of the world’s financial centers to work with partners around the globe to reform a failed regulatory system so that we can prevent the kind of financial abuses that led to this current crisis from ever happening again and achieve an economic expansion, not just in the United States, but in all across the hemisphere that is built not on bubbles but on sustainable economic growth.”
Of course, our team of special correspondent Janelle Chanona and Alex Ellis are still on the ground and they were very busy on the ground collecting a story today – and we’ll have that for you later on in the newscast.
