G-20 countries prepare to take historic inaction
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| Coming this week to Europe, but advance reviews negative. |
Likely critical response in London to Obama's road show: Solid performance, but poor script.
Apparently ungrateful that the U.S. dragged them down into a financial abyss, most of the rest of the planet's nations are rejecting the U.S. lead in helping them make the long climb back to the surface.
The major European countries, plus China and most every other country, are balking at following the U.S. example of trying to spend the way out of this financial crisis — just as most of them except Britain balked at following the U.S. lead into Iraq.
All of the considerable charm of Barack Obama is unlikely to work its magic at his inaugural global summit meeting.
As the Times (U.K.) reports in today's "Blow for Gordon Brown as world leaders prepare to stall at G-20 summit":
This came as leaders from China, Germany and Australia lined up over the weekend to warn that they were not yet ready to agree to further tax giveaways or benefits increases despite pressure from the US and Britain. Fears are rising that agreement at the London summit on Thursday may focus on more easily achievable goals, such as tax havens, rather than ensuring commitment to specific goals on spending and protectionism.
The Wall Street Journal's headline is even more stark: "For G-20, Lofty Goals Have Fallen to Earth."
Can you blame the G-20 countries? There's such a thing as too much Street cred.
And now the U.S. is contemplating an even bigger bailout of G.M. and Chrysler, which makes the rest of the globe nervous about the rise of protectionism.
They may not approve of the continued bailout of Detroit, but they can't help but secretly admire the U.S. government's ouster of GM CEO Rick Wagoner. And at least the U.S. government still has clout on this side of the Atlantic. (See my analysis earlier this morning of Wagoner's bonuses and pay hikes during GM's four-year slide into near-oblivion: "Ousted CEO Wagoner got 167 percent raise, $1.8 mil bonus while GM ailed even before meltdown.")
Historic decisions may not emerge from London, but news is being made over here: The WSJ characterizes the government's ouster of Wagoner and immense pressure on Detroit as an unprecedented overhaul — the kind that the auto industry and its mechanics frequently demand of American motorists:
The New York Times, steadfast in its coverage of history as the story of great and not-so-great men, rather than as a more complex collision of social and economic forces, promotes a Wagoner sidebar: "The Steady Optimist Who Oversaw G.M.'s Decline."
If by "steady optimist," the NYT means that Wagoner has been a huckster, the headline is accurate.
A further bailout of the automakers isn't exactly setting the world on fire: The Asian and European markets are slumping today on the news.
The G-20 countries are simply adamant that trillions of dollars committed to a joint so-called stimulus aren't enough and that much stronger regulation of the markets than the U.S. is apparently willing to embrace is needed.
In news not 100 percent related to the markets' slump, home-mortgage defaults in the U.S. are up, oil is down.
But the biggest news globally is the non-news likely to emerge from Thursday's summit in London and further confirmation that U.S. leadership of the planet, already damaged by the Bush-Cheney Era, is further slipping away.
Which means that the Star Trek version of future history — in which the U.S. dominates the planet — is likely to be even more wrong that it probably already was.
Even Barack Obama's acknowledged charisma, especially compared with George W. Bush's reign as the planet's Negative Zen Master, isn't enough. More from the Brit paper, which notes open dissent even from within Brown's government:
"We can't pin our hopes on what other people do, we can only pin our hopes on what we do for ourselves," he told Progress magazine. "Whether we win a fourth term or not is down to us — it's not down to President Obama or anyone else."
