G20 meeting: A meaningless, stage-managed performance
The Transnational Institute fellows comment on the G20
25 September 2009
We asked some of our Fellows (See detailed biographies for each below) what they expected to be the outcomes of the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh. Here are their thoughts:
Susan George:
“The outcome of the G20 meeting will be nothing but a little more regulation around the edges without changing anything fundamental.”
“I can understand that people are very angry about bonuses – a subject which will be brought up – but, for example, the large bonuses distributed by AIG were one tenth of one percent of the money it received from US taxpayers.”
“It is scandalous that at the last meeting, the G20 gave hundreds of billions to the IMF, one of the creators of the crisis in the South, with no conditions attached. The IMF has just made a loan to Honduras where a military coup took place in June this year. The World Bank, which is still lending billions to fossil fuel projects, is the last institution that should be entrusted with a climate fund.”
“Ultimately, the G20 is a self-appointed, self-legitimised body. There are 172 countries not represented.“
“The G20 is making some cosmetic changes but essentially saving the banks from the consequences of their own folly. In this sense, they are preparing the next crisis. Losses are socialised (paid by the public), while gains are privatised.”
“An enormous proportion of finance today, and alas tomorrow, has no social utility whatsoever, it is pure and simple gambling. The G20 is perpetuating this system.”
Walden Bello:
“The G20 is an informal grouping that is without legitimacy as an organisation to manage the global economic crisisis. As such, it is bound to fail.”
Howard Wachtel:
“The G20 is a ‘chat shop’, a meaningless and inconsequential stage-managed performance where an important business is conducted outside the official meeting. That is how President Bush saw it and that is how President Obama sees it today.”
“Nothing of consequence will emerge from the Pittsburgh G-20 meeting. The members of the G-20 will put out a very general statement on the need for regulation of financial markets – including the need for some form of global regulation. But they will avoid making the crucial decision on whether this is to be achieved by co-ordination of national regulatory systems or a new empowered global regulatory authority.”
Achin Vanaik:
“Now that the global recession has levelled off – even if only temporarily – the chance to end the dominance of Wall Street and the US dollar has become dimmer.
There is now little hope that we will move towards an international reserve currency and associated monitoring and clearing mechanisms that would be independent of the manipulation of any government and of huge vested financial interests operating through and next to such governments.
This is lamentable because the developing world and the poorer countries will need if they are not to be devastated by the imbalances created by international trade.
A new, fairer system of international monetary management is a crucial and the G-20 governments will have to be seriously pressured from below if they are to abandon their standard objective of pushing the interests of national and global elites while mouthing pieties about the needs of the poor.”
Does the G20 presents a significant step towards a new global governance order, as the Brookings Institute has recently claimed?
“You must be joking. What we are seeing is an effort in the post-Bush Junior era to readjust somewhat the organisational structure and workings of an arrangement that enjoys broad consensus which is that the US remains the indispensable power that must continue to lead the project of defending and promoting global elite interests.
This requires the sustenance of a global neo-liberal order by making it more stable. This includes better handling inter-country disputes among the G-20, and better handling pressures from below from those discontented and angry about such an unequal order.
This means the US must now work more cooperatively with other major powers and aspiring major powers by giving them more space and importance in the making of newer international arrangements, be it economic or political.
The G20 project is to undertake reforms precisely so as to minimise the degree and extent of reforms in the existing international order. In other words, it will enlarge the ‘big boys club’ so as to make the club itself more stable in its privileges and powers.”
Detailed biographies:
Howard Wachtel is a fellow of the Transnational Institute (TNI) and Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Israeli Studies at the American University in Washington DC. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Economic Integration.
Books: Howard’s latest book is Street of Dreams. Boulevard of Broken Hearts: Wall Street’s First Century. His book The Money Mandarins: The Making of a New Supranational Economc Order had a great success when it was first published back in 1986.
Expertise: Global Tax Systems; International Finance; Post-Washington Consensus; World Economy and International Money; US Corporations; Labour and the American Economy, Economic Transformation in the Planned Economies of East-Central Europe, the Former Soviet Union and the Third World.
Susan George is a fellow of the Transnational Institute (TNI) and author of fourteen books translated into many languages. She has acted as a consultant to various United Nations specialised agencies.
Books: Her best known books include Another World is Possible if…, A Fate Worse than Debt and How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger. The International Studies Association presented her with its first Outstanding Public Scholar Award at its annual Congress in Chicago in 2007.
Media coverage: Susan George is a frequent interviewee in print, radio and television and regularly contributes articles to Le Monde diplomatique, Open Democracy, El Pais, New Internationalist and The Nation.
Expertise: European Union reform; European trade policy; Debt and International Financial Institutions; Alternatives to Corporate Globalisation; Currency Transaction Tax; Food Security; International Trade
Walden Bello is a fellow of the Transnational Institute (TNI) and executive director of Focus on the Global South.
Achin Vanaik:
“Now that the global recession has levelled off – even if only temporarily – the chance to end the dominance of Wall Street and the US dollar has become dimmer.
There is now little hope that we will move towards an international reserve currency and associated monitoring and clearing mechanisms that would be independent of the manipulation of any government and of huge vested financial interests operating through and next to such governments.
This is lamentable because the developing world and the poorer countries will need if they are not to be devastated by the imbalances created by international trade.
A new, fairer system of international monetary management is a crucial and the G-20 governments will have to be seriously pressured from below if they are to abandon their standard objective of pushing the interests of national and global elites while mouthing pieties about the needs of the poor.”
Does the G20 presents a significant step towards a new global governance order, as the Brookings Institute has recently claimed?
“You must be joking. What we are seeing is an effort in the post-Bush Junior era to readjust somewhat the organisational structure and workings of an arrangement that enjoys broad consensus which is that the US remains the indispensable power that must continue to lead the project of defending and promoting global elite interests.
This requires the sustenance of a global neo-liberal order by making it more stable. This includes better handling inter-country disputes among the G-20, and better handling pressures from below from those discontented and angry about such an unequal order.
This means the US must now work more cooperatively with other major powers and aspiring major powers by giving them more space and importance in the making of newer international arrangements, be it economic or political.
The G20 project is to undertake reforms precisely so as to minimise the degree and extent of reforms in the existing international order. In other words, it will enlarge the ‘big boys club’ so as to make the club itself more stable in its privileges and powers.”
Detailed biographies:
Howard Wachtel is a fellow of the Transnational Institute (TNI) and Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Israeli Studies at the American University in Washington DC. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Economic Integration.
Books: Howard’s latest book is Street of Dreams. Boulevard of Broken Hearts: Wall Street’s First Century. His book The Money Mandarins: The Making of a New Supranational Economc Order had a great success when it was first published back in 1986.
Expertise: Global Tax Systems; International Finance; Post-Washington Consensus; World Economy and International Money; US Corporations; Labour and the American Economy, Economic Transformation in the Planned Economies of East-Central Europe, the Former Soviet Union and the Third World.
Susan George is a fellow of the Transnational Institute (TNI) and author of fourteen books translated into many languages. She has acted as a consultant to various United Nations specialised agencies.
Books: Her best known books include Another World is Possible if…, A Fate Worse than Debt and How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger. The International Studies Association presented her with its first Outstanding Public Scholar Award at its annual Congress in Chicago in 2007.
Media coverage: Susan George is a frequent interviewee in print, radio and television and regularly contributes articles to Le Monde diplomatique, Open Democracy, El Pais, New Internationalist and The Nation.
Expertise: European Union reform; European trade policy; Debt and International Financial Institutions; Alternatives to Corporate Globalisation; Currency Transaction Tax; Food Security; International Trade
Walden Bello is a fellow of the Transnational Institute (TNI) and executive director of Focus on the Global South.
Books: He is the author of numerous books on Asian issues and globalisation, including Dilemmas of Domination: the Unmaking of the American Empire (2005), Deglobalisation: ideas for a new world economy (2004).
Media coverage: Bello is a regular contributor to numerous periodicals including Review of international Political Economy, Third World Quarterly, Foreign Policy, Race and Class, Le Monde Diplomatique, Le Monde, Guardian, Boston Globe, Far Eastern Economic Review, and La Jornada and has been interviewed by a wide range of international television and radio programmes.
Expertise: Regionalisms & Globalisation; Alternatives to Corporate Globalisation; Financial Markets; International Financial Institutions; International Trade; WTO; Alternative Security in the Asia-Pacific, US hegemony; Social Forums
Achin Vanaik is a fellow of the Transnational Institute (TNI) and Professor of International Relations and Global Politics at the Delhi University.
Books: He is the editor of two books: Selling US Wars, an analysis of US foreign policy and Globalization and South Asia: Multidimensional Perspectives. He has also written and contributed to a number of books on a range of issues including communalism, democracy and nuclear policy.
Media coverage: Vanaik is an independent journalist writing regularly for various national newspapers and formerly the assistant editor of the Times in India. Achin Vanaik is frequently interviewed and contributes to The Telegraph (Calcutta) and The Hindu.
Expertise: Indian Security & Foreign Policy, Indian Communalism, US Military Policy Nuclear Disarmament in South Asia, Nuclear Weapon Free Zones.
