In a speech to the Economic Club in Washington D.C., Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the U.S. bears a “substantial share” of the responsibility for the global financial crisis, and he believes the U.S. must recover first in order to return the rest of the world to growth.

Despite saying that the U.S. did have a substantial role to play in any global economic recovery, Geithner urged international cooperation on the crisis, saying that only by working together would every country recover fully from this crisis.

“We each face somewhat different challenges and thus are not all in the same boat,” Geithner. “But we are all in the same storm.”

Geithner spent most of the speech outlining what his department and the Obama Administration had done in the past four months — including the passage of the $787 billion economic stimulus package and the G-20 conference last month.

A globally coordinated action is needed, Geithner said, because no economy has been left untouched by this credit crisis. The Treasury Secretary cited a report by the International Monetary Fund forecasting that the global economy would contract for the first time in six decades, and only 17 out of 182 tracked economies are expected to grow faster in 2009 than they did in 2008.

“Never before in modern times has so much of the world been simultaneously hit by the confluence of economic and financial turmoil such as we are not living through,” he said.

Despite the need for global action, Geithner said that it was imperative that the U.S. economy help lead the global economy out of recession.

“The rest of the world needs the U.S. economy and financial system to recover in order for it to revive,” Geithner said. “We remain at the center of the global economic activity with financial and trade ties to every region of the globe.”

Despite pushing for the U.S. economy to recover first, Geithner said the U.S. should not focus its energy on reviving consumer spending — which currently makes up approximately 70% of the U.S. economy — and instead should focus on growth in “sustainable” sectors.

“We must ensure that our economies recover, growth will be on a firmer foundation, more stable and more sustainable,” he said.