LINDAU, Germany - German Federal President Christian Wulff criticized countries such as Greece and the United States for failing to confront banking, fiscal and debt problems, which has added to the world's economic woes.

"For many years, many countries kept putting off dealing with problems by raising public expenditure, accumulating debts and issuing cheaper money," Wulff said at Wednesday's opening of a four-day conference of Nobel laureates on economics and young economists.

"At the same time, countries were consuming and speculating on a grand scale."