UK: Obama sprinkles stardust as new world eco order dawns
By Kate Hannon, National Political Editor.03 Apr 2009 12:09 PM
LONDON, April 3 AAP - Laden with the expectations of more than six billion people, 20 world leaders must have heaved a collective sigh of relief after stock markets spiked upwards on news of the G20 deal to rescue the planet from ruin.
Declared a "new world order" by the G20 summit host, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Thursday's historic agreement sent markets in New York, London, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Tokyo skyrocketing within minutes of being unveiled.
Not since the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 set the rules for currency exchange rates, created the gold standard and set up the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has there been such an important meeting.
At first blush, its tempting to argue that proof of the summit's importance will be how the 20 leaders sell the benefits once they get back to their respective homes.
It's also too narrow an analysis to see it as an exercise whose best result will be to shore up the leadership of politicians such as Brown, who is deeply unpopular in his own country, or German Chancellor Angela Merkel who faces elections later this year.
While it's true it could take years before the result agreed in London this week is judged a success, the G20 outcome represents success where a similar gathering in 1933 failed dismally, condemning the world to another decade of depression.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, among others, has argued for some time the G20 - the world's 20 largest economies - is a better vehicle to deal with the economic crisis than the Group of Eight - or G8 - leading economies.
With the world plunged into its deepest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, largely at the hands of governments which allowed their banking systems to go unregulated, gorging themselves on credit given to people without the means to repay, it was plain there was a need for a new order.
According to Brazil's President Lula da Silva, the current crisis has been created by the irresponsible behaviour of white, blue-eyed people - that is, not the non-white poor people living in developing nations.
Rudd and others have also argued strongly for China, India, and to a lesser extent Brazil, to be recognised as the economic powerhouses of the 21st century and given a greater say around the economic roundtable and for developing nations to get a better deal.
There is a shift, Rudd says, in world economic power towards the Asia-Pacific region which must be recognised.
The $US1.1 trillion summit deal was agreed to less than six hours after leaders began meeting on Thursday at the barn-like ExCel Centre in the wastelands of London's Docklands in the city's east.
But the legwork which prepared much of the communique has been undertaken in earnest since the last G20 summit in Washington DC in November which set up a series of working groups with Rudd leading the charge on IMF reform and proposals to curb executive salaries.
Rudd had almost run himself ragged by Wednesday after days of back-to-back meetings with leaders and economists.
His immediate task once he returns home on Saturday will be to talk up the summit result as a victory for job security in Australia as he and his government prepares next month's federal budget.
Rudd was forced during the week to defend his advocacy of China as the bright new jewel of the world economic order, saying the nation is Australia's largest trading partner and Australian jobs depend on that.
"That's the bottom line here, I'm in the hunt for Australian jobs," Rudd said.
So are his fellow summiteers.
On the big day, the initial signs were not encouraging with first, the Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper missing the "family photograph" of world leaders.
A reshoot was set up but this time while Harper was in, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had gone AWOL.
Third time lucky, and the photo shoot was a success, leaving the leaders to the task of finalising the communique.
As restless journalists sat out the hours waiting for the result, former Boomtown Rats lead singer and anti-poverty campaigner Bob Geldof offered himself up as a one-man moving press conference, talking to gaggles of journalists.
While in years to come the summit is likely to be seen as the beginning of a fresh economic beginning, it will more immediately be remembered for its protests, threats of walkouts by the French, the wheeling and dealing, and the invasion of London by world leaders which at times paralysed one of the world's largest cities.
But it was the new kid on the block - Obama - whose cool, professorial style won over his fellow leaders and charmed the cynical hacks.
As local media observed, Obama came to London and sprinkled a little stardust wherever he went.
