News reports indicate that the G-20 pledged an additional $1.1 trillion in financing for the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other global institutions so that they can help countries cope with the global economic crisis. The details of the proposal are virtually non-existent, i.e. exactly who will be responsible for what portion of the pledge, what exactly the money is supposed to be used for, and when it will be delivered. It’s clear that much of the money was already in the pipeline in one form or another. …
The G-20 summit communiqué has been released. As we predicted, it has something for everyone, though rather more for the Europeans than the Americans, and even less for the Chinese. And there are constructive points in it, though whether they will amount to much remains to be seen. But by and large, the communiqué marks a large step in the wrong direction for the U.S. and the world. First, the summit has agreed to treble the resources of the IMF to $750 billion, to support $100 billion in funding for …
That’s a bit of an exaggeration. No serious person can deny the importance of the global financial crisis. We can only hope that the U.S. and Britain don’t get swept away by its urgency and agree to a lot of European and Russian proposals that would make it worse, and themselves poorer and less sovereign. But as bad as the financial crisis is, it’s not nearly as bad as the coming entitlements one. That’s the message the IMF, in its latest paper on “The State of Public Finances: Outlook and …
This past weekend President Bush announced plans to host an “emergency” summit of world leaders to “overhaul the regulatory framework for global finance.” Bush offered few details on what actual policy fixes would be addressed, but British Prime Minister Gordon Brown penned an op-ed in for The Washington Post calling for unprecedented levels of “global governance,” including global standards for accounting and regulation and a “renewal of our international institutions to make them effective early-warning systems for the world economy.” Specifically, Brown wants to enhance the power and authority of …
