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G-20 Nations Divided over How to Fix World Economy
Markus Dettmer, Christian Reiermann and Wolfgang Reuter, Spiegel online
In the run-up to the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, there are very few issues that all the participating nations agree on. Member states are divided over whether to limit bankers’ bonuses and how to boost growth. But one thing is certain: A German proposal to tax financial transactions doesn’t stand a chance of being approved.
German Finance Minister Peer SteinbrĂĽck is known to keep a tight rein on his ministry. His nicknames among his staff — “Supeer” and “Peerfect” — attest to the respect his employees have for their boss. Yet with less than a week to go before Germany’s general election on Sept. 27, SteinbrĂĽck’s two highest-ranking civil servants, Jörg Asmussen and Werber Gatzer, are being disobedient.
The reason for this ministerial mutiny? They’re angry that SteinbrĂĽck and Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Frank-Walter Steinmeier are pushing for a global tax on all financial transactions. SteinbrĂĽck grandly announced the topic would be on the agenda of this week’s G-20 summit in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24-25. And yet just a few weeks ago he was against such a tax. His ministry has also been firmly against the idea up until now.
…Hanging over all of this is the same fundamental conflict that overshadowed the London summit, namely that Britain and the US want to crank up global demand and growth while the continental Europeans are more concerned with regulating the financial markets. Unless the delegates in Pittsburgh can reach a compromise, there may be dire consequences. New trade disputes could arise which would further weaken the already poor prospects for growth.
(22 Sept 2009)
G20 Focus: Another battle begins
Sean O’Grady, The Independent
ust as timing is the secret of successful … comedy, so it is with global economic management. Precisely when the world economy will be strong enough to withstand the withdrawal of the vast artificial stimulus it has enjoyed over the past year is by far the most crucial question facing world leaders in Pittsburgh this week, whatever headlines may be grabbed by the anti-capitalism protesters. The issue is unlikely to be fully resolved, if only because you can only tell if an economy has properly recovered after the event.
Nor, in anything other than the broadest terms, will the G20 nations say what, precisely, they will do to stop banks and bankers from taking the sorts of excessive risks that helped to land the world in the mess it is in today. Moreover, even for men and women representing 85 per cent of global GDP, the money for propping up the global economy may run out eventually, a spectre at the grand feasts awaiting them in Pennsylvania.
In the post-Lehman Brothers atmosphere leading up to the G20 summit in Washington last November and the first few months of this year, financial apocalypse seemed imminent – and forced action. When Gordon Brown, echoing praise heaped upon him by the Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman, misspoke in the Commons last December and declared that he had “saved the world”, he was mocked. Now, however, even his most bitter critics acknowledge that the decisive action taken by the G20 over the past year or so – record low interest rates, record large budget deficits and refinancing of the banks – probably averted a full-blown, 1930s-style recession…
(22 Sept 2009)
Globalization Goes Bankrupt
Chris Hedges, truthdig
The rage of the disposed is fracturing the country, dividing it into camps that are unmoored from the political mainstream. Movements are building on the ends of the political spectrum that have lost faith in the mechanisms of democratic change. You can’t blame them. But unless we on the left move quickly, this rage will be captured by a virulent and racist right wing, one that seeks a disturbing proto-fascism.
Every day counts. Every deferral of protest hurts. We should, if we have the time and the ability, make our way to Pittsburgh for the meeting of the G-20 this week rather than do what the power elite is hoping we will do—stay home. Complacency comes at a horrible price.
“The leaders of the G-20 are meeting to try and salvage their power and money after everything that has gone wrong,” said Benedicto Martinez Orozco, co-president of the Mexican Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT), who is in Pittsburgh for the protests. “This is what this meeting is about.”
The delegates to the G-20, the gathering of the world’s wealthiest nations, will consequently be protected by a National Guard combat battalion, recently returned from Iraq. The battalion will shut down the area around the city center, man checkpoints and patrol the streets in combat gear. Pittsburgh has augmented the city’s police force of 1,000 with an additional 3,000 officers. Helicopters have begun to buzz gatherings in city parks, buses driven to Pittsburgh to provide food to protesters have been impounded, activists have been detained, and permits to camp in the city parks have been denied. Web sites belonging to resistance groups have been hacked and trashed, and many groups suspect that they have been infiltrated and that their phones and e-mail accounts are being monitored…
(20 Sept 2009)
