'This is the day the world came together to fight back against the global recession, not with words but with a plan for global recovery and reform,' said Gordon Brown at the end of what many believe was an astonishing G20 summit.
Astonishing in that just 24 hours earlier, the French were threatening to walk out, the Germans were unhappy at the size of bail outs and China did not want anything that ruined their chances of re-stimulating their economy. Rumours abounded that Barack Obama himself acted as a mediator between the French and Chinese to get agreements.
So What Did We Get?
There were a lot of floral words and nice commitments but the really meaty bits which had a plan attached, was the $1 trillion stimulus package and the consensus on regulation going forward which should be a great deal tougher than before. The French and Germans will feel very cosy after all this, as the stimulus package seemed somewhat restrained given a similar amount was pledged as part of the last stimulus package in the US alone. The good news is that the money goes to the IMF who will in turn pledge around $100bn to help bail out the struggling nations.
Beyond that, we were into the world of platitudes - promote global trade and reject protectionism and build an inclusive, green and sustainable recovery seemed like noble aims but in practice will be very hard to achieve and nebulous to measure. While my theme of transparency was not referred to there was a reference to reforming the international financial institutions under greater scrutiny, looking at bonuses more carefully, financial accounts, tax havens, hedge funds - in general, a far higher level of scrutiny.
Are We Really OK Now Then?
I think everyone realises that the summit could not wave a magic wand and put all to right. But this is probably a distant second. There is broad agreement on a way forward on funding, stimulus and regulation and those are pretty crucial. It was certainly a case of 'Look after your own' in that there was little hope given to less well off nations who were sitting, quite literally open-mouthed, waiting for the developed world to remember them and so the word 'protectionism' to them has a different meaning. But that said, at least we have some way forward.
I think there is a general relief that the magnitude of the new stimulus package is far less than we all worried about. There seems to be an air of restraint and that comes as a blessed relief to taxpayers who waited to see just how much of their future earnings and well being were staked on their behalf.
In some respects we got away with less of a sting than we thought.
Of course, I am far to thick to realise quite where the IMF gets all its money from if we don't have it to give to them and given that we may have to go back there, cap in hand, at some stage, it seems a bit pointless handing over what we haven't got. But that's just my naive self talking. I am sure someone can put me right on that - maybe its like EC rebates.
Hope At Last
What the G20 summit did prove is that in a world of terrible divides, there is the power to drive us to come together with common commitment to tackle issues when they threaten us all.
It is a tragedy that it had to be something which in reality is trivial, to do so. Trivial in the sense that it is the future prosperity of the developed world that was at stake caused by the greed of the minority - if only we could have been meeting to give $1 trillion to the poor, starving and diseased of this world or tackling the consumption of our natural resources or the level of CO2 in our atmosphere - all with the same level of collective commitment to the common good.
Instead it was all about self-preservation. As much as I am happy we got a consensus, once again it will be one of the major missed opportunities of the decade as there will be unlikely a time when the same people meet to discuss other agendas.
Life, indeed, does go on.
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