Inside the G20 summit, world leaders agreed to a controversial goal of cutting government deficits in half by 2013. Economists say such a move could usher in sizable tax increases and massive cuts in government programs, including benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare. The Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz criticized the G20 agreement, saying, “There are almost no successful cases of countries cutting back on their expenditures as a way of getting out of the kind of economic downturn.” Meanwhile, world leaders at the G20 failed to come to an agreement on setting new global rules for big banks or imposing a new across-the-board global bank tax.