The expectations game

ANKARA: World's 20 largest economies, including India, today launched W20, an engagement grouping of women leaders, to push for gender inclusive global economic growth. The W20 group -- having 20 women leaders from G20 nations -- would host its first summit next month in Istanbul after all member countries appoint their nominees. At the official launch event here, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the prosperity of a country can be best understood by the smile of women from that country and it is very important to empower them in the economic growth process.

Seoul, South Korea: The global economy looks stronger now than it did at the G20 Summit in London last spring. But the will to cooperate looks a lot weaker - and so does President Obama.  

GYEONGJU, South Korea (MNI) - The meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs ended here Saturday amid claims that real progress has been made on addressing the global imbalances and the spats over currency interventions that have dogged the global economic recovery.

It looks like the G20 on Friday will emphasize its new “framework” for curing macroeconomic imbalances, rather than any substantive measures to regulate banks, derivatives, or any other primary cause of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. This is appealing to the G20 leaders because their call to “rebalance” global growth will involve no immediate action and no changes in policy – other than in the “medium run” (watch for this phrase in the communiqué). When exactly is the medium run?

Barry Eichengreen, 26 June 2011Global imbalances remain a key issue for G20 leaders. This column evaluates the progress made by G20 leaders in the run up to their Cannes summit this November, concluding that the G20 process is unlikely to protect us from the risks posed by disorderly unwinding of imbalances. Full Article: The G20 and global imbalances

Western officials should have realised this Summit would be different when they arrived in Seoul to find their phones and blackberrys didn't work. The problem was that Korea's nationwide 4G network was too advanced. On early negotiating missions, key UK officials found themselves communicating with London via gmail, on rented phones. That was never a problem in Pittsburgh, or Toronto. But as George Osborne liked to point out, this was the first G20 Summit not hosted by a G8 country - and, he might have added, the first where G8 countries didn't call the tune.

The timing of China's exchange rate move is hardly accidental. The Chinese have said they will "increase the flexibility" of the exchange rate "to benefit the domestic economy". But in the very short term, it is in Toronto where the benefits will most clearly be felt.

By Willem Thorbecke Today, we're fortunate to have Willem Thorbecke, Senior Research Fellow at Asian Development Bank Institute and a Consulting Fellow at Japan's Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, as a guest contributor. Asia's role in the propagation of the global recession has been a subject of study, but relatively little attention has been devoted to the interaction of exchange rates a