G-20 Summit...New World Order?

Some G20 nations hope the weekend summit on financial reform will be a modern Bretton Woods, but can it make big decisions without Barack Obama? By Stephen Foley in New York

Wednesday, 12 November 2008

For the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, it is a "new Bretton Woods", as important as the 1944 convention that established the modern financial world order. For Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, it is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to remake the global financial architecture and usher in an era of "regulated capitalism". But beware the headlines that these leaders try to manufacture when they assemble for their credit crisis summit in Washington this weekend.

What we have is a summit without an agenda, on a crisis without an agreed cause, in a country without a functioning government. The US whose outgoing President agreed to hold the meeting under French pressure, and whose President-elect, keen to stress that the US has "only one president at a time", won't even be there has already bristled at European talk of a creating new supra-national regulators and international rules.

Bretton Woods created the International Monetary Fund, which endures as the one international body powerful enough to prop up governments and economies that run into trouble. It also created a system of fixed exchange rates that failed to endure into the Seventies. Today, despite a financial crisis that is agreed to be the worst since the Great Depression, little yet under academic discussion rises to the level of ambition on display in the New Hampshire mountains in 1944. Certainly, nothing likely to be on the table on Friday and Saturday rises to that level.

"The truth is that national regulators failed, but national politicians don't want to be blamed, and so they blame a lack of international co-ordination and respond by calling an international summit. Lo and behold, we have a G20 summit without an agenda."

Behind the scenes, work on an official communique is already under way, but people with knowledge of the discussions say it is currently broad-brush to the point of bland, and will promise a lot more work still to be done.

The problem is that there is little agreement yet on the necessary counter-factual: what type of financial architecture, if it had been in place, would have prevented a housing downturn in the US from becoming a credit crisis that engulfed the world?

Discussions last week between the countries of the European Union, as it agreed its position before the meeting, were notable by even their lack of agreement about the extent of international regulation that might be desirable. Specific plans, such as a "college of supervisors" bringing together different national regulators to oversee the activities of multinational finance firms, could take flight, but even the EU appears reluctant to let go of national powers, and the US has never previously shown an inclination to do so. The White House has already played down talk it could accede to demands to curb speculation and to regulate hedge funds on an international basis.

Mr Brown, meanwhile, has talked about setting up an early warning system for international crises, but it remains unclear how to get people to listen to it. He has also called for emerging economic powers such as China and those in the Middle East to contribute more to the IMF, and for bolstering that organisation's powers. Meanwhile, China and other countries in the G20 which, unlike the G7, encompasses emerging powers such as Brazil, Russia and India are pushing for a greater say in the IMF as a quid pro quo.

These are longer-term issues that might rise to the level of a Bretton Woods, and they will get little airing this weekend. They may get more if the Europeans succeed in getting agreement on a second summit in 100 days, when President Obama will be in place and his administration's world view will have begun to emerge.

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[G20decisionmakers]

The super rich aren't clever. They are deceitful. They are psychopathic. They are callous. They are greedy. They are, quite simply, evil.

They must be resisted and removed from power. They haven't earned it by merit, they have stolen it by violence and subterfuge. I want a fair society. If someone works and produces something good for us to consume, I have no problem with them becoming rich. I don't think money should be allowed to make more money by creating debt for others.

[RenegadeTimes]

The collapse is an orcehstrated plan. These people "super-class" don't make mistakes !! Get real !! Their agendas are coming to fuition.

( Bilderberg ) The U.S. will change in ways Americans will not recognize. Seat belts on people , you are in for the ride of your life !!!

[WardyProductions]

@s2561268

lol hello sheep.

you fucking moron.

[JaMesJC112]

@s2561268 you need to shut the fuck up and open your eyes. he's speaking the truth, whether you believe in the new world order, even though its so fucking obvious!

[s2561268]

@G20decisionmakers God damn it, you conspiracy theorists need to shut the fuck up and get a life

[59norm59]

A commitment across the globe from a goverment who doesn't recognise the "Will", of it's own people. Now common place for goverment officials & candidtates to blatently lie throughout their career, w/out being held accountable. The miriad of crimes againt humanity, continue. You have no voice or vote...get a clue. We need a revolution.

[infantry031]

@squirrelybmx i think it goes beyond these leaders, there is a war for our mind body and souls, they print the money out of thin air, so it cant be about money, but wtf do any of us know sitting in our tiny corner of the world filling our heads with information that is being filtered, obviously we are compartmentalized, we live in a vast universe beyond comprehension, yet we sit in front of screens our whole life, not just me and you...EVERYBODY, is that a coincidence haha, nothing is, NOTHING

[infantry031]

@yinz4444 straight up bro, get off their fuckin monatery tit

[aI2TvrQ]

SO... after all, running from red (...) communism to... resolve in blue (...) globalism?

[squirrelybmx]

i know alot about this but can someone tell me why they are doing this? they have all the power in the wolrd, someone respond to me please

[322skull]

Video responses into the memory hole...?.322

[uvx15]

G-20 and G-8 are just tools.. The real decisions are made by the Bilderberg Group, there is where our faith is being writen, in the shadows.. We have to step up, take back our world, we are no slaves, and we the people have to unite, and fight the New World Order.

Peace*