G-20 Wrapped Up

Just got out of President Obama's press conference, which effectively concluded the major proceedings of today's G-20 summit. The president was clearly the main event, and used it as an opportunity to reassert American leadership - his press conference was not only significantly longer than that of Summit host Gordon Brown, but his was the last to finish it off.

The G-20 established a communique, some of it specific, most of it broad, to address the financial crisis. The highlight is the effective tripling of the International Monetary Fund's resources thanks to Japan, the European Union, and other unnamed donors -- it is unclear how much China or Saudi Arabia have provided, but it's likely they're a big part of it. In the words of IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, "the IMF is back."

Partially due to recent economic data but also because of the apparent success of the Summit, stock markets in Japan, Europe, London and the United States rallied. Is this the end of the crisis? Will this improve confidence in the world economy? And will this help the poorest in the world?

This writer is skeptical. The Communique as such lacked meat on several key issues such as climate change, poverty reduction and corporate governance - it will be interesting to see if the 20 governments involved also will be to ratify or enact key parts of the deal. Agreeing to agree may not be enough.