Sydney - Central bankers are to meet in Australia's biggest city for two days of talks as plunging stock markets renew fears of a slow and patchy recovery from the global financial crisis, Sydney's Herald Sun reported Saturday. The paper said representatives from 24 central banks, including the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, are to assemble Sunday and Monday in an undisclosed location.
The organizer of the meeting is the Bank for International Settlements rather than the Australian government, which would help explain why secrecy prevails.
The governors of the People's Bank of China, the Bank of Japan and the Reserve Bank of India are said to be on the guest list.
The gathering, arranged last year, takes place against a background of world share markets reeling from fears that governments, not just companies, may have difficulty with their balance sheets.
"It's been a long time since we have seen really serious sovereign risk in developed economies," Gerard Minack, the head of brokerage Morgan Stanley's Australian operations, told the public broadcaster ABC. "We don't have a lot of history to go by, at least in the modern era."
Minack said the concern was not just about Greece, Spain and other southern European countries - the so called Club Med - but about other economies.
"We are now seeing it spread around the ring of fire that surrounds core Europe," he said. "I mean, Eastern Europe looks terrible. We know already there are concerns about the Spanish, the Italians, possibly the Japanese."
Australian shares lost 2.3 per cent of their value Friday in line with stock markets around the world. The Australian dollar fell to a six-week low against the US dollar as investors sought a safe haven in the world's top currency.
