Academic

The G20 Finance Ministerial

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

To the extent that global governance can help us out of the recession, it is interesting that it has been the G20 that has been the body tasked to do it - no UN (of course), no OECD, some developing participation, but not too much, no treaty framework, giving the group flexibility ... it very much has a Concert of Europe feel.  We told you about their first meeting here - it produced a combination of the somewhat substantive and the diplomatic blatherous.  The second meeting comes in April, which is when something serious is supposed to have happened; this weekend, the G20 finance ministers met for a "how'm I doing?" pre-meeting.

The pre-meeting disappointed, and one problem seems to be that Germany reiterated its opposition to a further Keynesian stimulus.  Simon Johnson, a fantastic crisis blogger, and big supporter of government intervention in the economy, is driven to inarticulateness about it here.  He appears to believe that we are at a high noon, where government breaks the banks or gets broken by them, which is interestingly proto-Marxist, here.  And his recommendation?

Oh, only two trillion for stabilization.  Prior experience suggests to me that much of this gets given to the banks that Johnson thinks government must destroy.  But I may be missing something.

Full post as published by Conglomerate on March 15, 2009 (boomark / email).