As former CBS correspondent Tom Fenton wrote from London, “The agreements reached at the summit depend on the willingness of individual countries to carry them out. There will be a follow-up summit this fall to check on progress. President Obama said it will take a year or two to tell whether the summit has been successful in lifting the world out of recession. He was right to be cautious.”
He was also right to recognize that he didn’t accomplish his goal, as veteran British journalist Andrew Neil wrote on the Daily Beast: “For a start, the President did not get what, for him, was the original purpose of this G20 summit: a coordinated global fiscal stimulus. The British media may still fawn before the Obamas the way the US media used to, the First Lady can even touch the Queen in Buck House without being sent to the Tower of London; but the Obama charisma and character could not get an extra cent out of the world community.”
So we are back to square one. The markets rose the day after the Summit not because of what was said there but because interest rates were cut in Europe and China released a positive report.
Many politicians have been complicit in the policies that led to the crisis. A banker who was there.Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, said he was worried that “many of the world leaders had gotten into something that was over their heads.” Probably true.
What was accomplished? Some windows were broken . A demonstrator died, The police, as usual, overreacted. The media has moved on.
In all, not too encouraging.
News Dissector Danny Schechter blogs for Mediachannel.org. He is making a film based on his new book PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books at Amazon.com) Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org
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