Protesters and pols descended in full force on London today.

The pols at the G-20 summit were sharply dressed in business blues and didn't carry signs. The protesters were dressed in hoodies. In warmup rallies last weekend, there were bigger crowds, along with chants of "Burn the bankers!"

Today, the crowds outside the Bank of England are smaller, and no bankers have been reported burned.

There have also been chants of "Money is for losers!" Ludicrous chants in many ways, but especially considering the money raked in by such losers as AIG's bonus babies and ousted GM CEO Rick Wagoner (not to mention the loot that Royal Bank of Scotland CEO Fred Goodwin got when he was kicked out).

Today, there's been lots of pushing and shoving between riot cops and protesters (see above video). No direct shoving of bankers has been reported. You won't see such unseemly behavior when riots start on Wall Street because New York City cops and officials know how to stifle protests, thanks to their experience in blunting the public's anger during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama is trying to prop up Gordon Brown, at least in public. BBC commentators are noting this morning how the still-popular Obama is freely spending his enormous political capital to try to bail out the British P.M., who doesn't have a pot of popularity to piss in.

As previously noted, whatever comes out of the G-20 summit is likely to be disagreement on how exactly to disagree — but couched in polite language.

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":

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.")

British stock-market regulators are asking for authority to offer "U.S.-style plea bargains" to witnesses in major fraud cases in order to bring down the masterminds, the London Stock Exchange itself notes.

That authority is already part of a bill before Parliament. Like its more-or-less counterpart, the SEC, the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority has been hammered for not preventing the banking crisis.

Whistleblowers would be granted immunity, says a weekend story in the Guardian, if they testify against ringleaders. The FSA has often been referred to in the British press as "toothless." (Side note: Dental care in the U.K. has historically been less important, at least in terms of whiteness and straightness, than in the U.S. Even Ricky Gervais admits it.)

But crookedness is the point, and as previously reported, European finance ministers may be more interested than their U.S. counterparts in Barack Obama's administration in rooting it out — the Brits say they want stiffer regulation of, say, hedge funds rather than merely requiring such entities to be more "transparent," as Obama's minions have called for.

The U.K. government really does sound serious about pursuing gangbankers — instead of merely bloviating about it as congressman Gary Ackerman did last month in Congress.

Just as on Wall Street, these well-groomed financial gangsters have had the run of the City. So much so that, as James Lieber pointed out in late January in his monumental Voice story "What Cooked the World's Economy?" (yes, I know I keep referring to it, but it was good and it zoomed in on the real villains), AIG Financial Products, based in London, wreaked particular havoc on the U.S. economy.

In any case, there's a lot of tough talk coming out of Number 10 and the Financial Services Authority, the non-governmental regulator of U.K. markets, but one that has power at least equivalent to the SEC. The LSE's story says:

I was wrong Monday when I said Gordon Brown was coming to the U.S. with hat in hand.

Like that other Brown (James), the British prime minister's getting down on his knees and begging, "Please! Please! Puhleeeze!" Ignoring the economic fracturing of Europe that's setting east against west and even endangering the euro, the P.M. told a joint session of Congress today:

Love that last line.

The Wall Street Journal's quick-breaking story explains a little of the urgency — the Democrats are beginning to sound a little too protectionist:

Like that sea of red ink.

See the Times story of Brown's speech; read the WSJ's transcript of the speech itself.