In These New Times

Telegraph 11/11/08

It has been widely speculated that the G20 will fail to reach a substantial agreement this weekend. Undoubtedly any major measures such as pegging the dollar to the gold standard will be hampered
by the Bush Admin. Brown has been looking for large funds for the IMF, while Sarkozy has been seeking to reform  this institution. The idea of seeking an early warning system is a little too late for some economies including the US and the UK. The meeting will perhaps put more money in the bailout pot but that will at the most only slow down the depression. The G20 will make clearer the direction of the currency issue which is really the key to whether or not the effects of neoliberalism and deregulation are to be tamed for the rest of the world and thus giving it more stability and ability to aid the fast ailing economies of the west.

Gordon Brown, would-be savior of the ailing global economy, has begun ratcheting down expectations for a speedy global response.

The U.K. government said Monday that definitive agreements about how to address the economic crisis weren’t likely to emerge from a leaders’ summit in Washington this weekend.

The prime minister has sought to position himself at the fore of managing the crisis world-wide. In recent weeks, he has outlined a string of broad proposals for the summit to address. But a Brown spokesman cautioned Monday that there was going to be a “substantial debate” about reforms to the international financial system and that the discussions wouldn’t be resolved this weekend.

Twenty heads of government will attend the meeting, including the leaders of China, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia, as well as leaders from the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations.

Mr. Brown’s interest in empowering global bodies to supervise international financial markets stretches back to 1998, when he began arguing that the global nature of modern financial markets meant national methods of regulation were out of date.

In a speech Monday evening, Mr. Brown urged the heads of government “to begin to build a new Bretton Woods with a new IMF that offers…an early warning system and a crisis-prevention mechanism for the whole world,” according to an advance transcript of his remarks.

But with the U.S. cautious about signing on to broad global reforms and others wary of allowing the International Monetary Fund too much power, such far-reaching reforms look ambitious. Complicating matters, the meeting is taking place during the transition to a new presidential administration in the U.S.

—Laurence Norman and Alistair MacDonald