AFTER THE SUMMIT: What Was Accomplished & For How Long?
Summits Come and Summits Go As The Economy Continues Its Slide
By Danny Schechter
Author of PLUNDER
The eyes of the world have been on the Economic Summit in London but the ideas of the world were mostly conspicuous by their absence. Here we have a global crisis. The house is on fire. Unemployment is climbing. The real estate contagion is now claiming condos and even shopping malls. It’s bad and by most accounts, getting worse. And, all the “leaders” of the world can do is devote ONE DAY to a forum that must have cost millions to stage.
Our media and politicians love spectacles and political celebrities. The spin was on what Michelle was wearing, not on what Barack was thinking when he was so unwilling to agree to an international regime of regulation which is so clearly needed in a globalized world economy.
The New York Times was properly critical of the Summit for falling “short,” mostly focusing on the failure to commit to a larger stimulus package—what the US wanted but didn’t get. They went lightly on their criticisms on the regulatory issue.The group also agreed to crack down on tax havens and, on a country-by-country basis, impose stricter financial regulations on hedge funds and rating agencies — necessary though insufficient steps to avoid a repeat of the current disaster.” They never asked nor did they fully report on why Obama is “fiercely resistant to the idea of a global regulator.”
(Bob Jackson of Arizona offered one plausible explanation: “‘The one smart thing the President did in London was to establish that the U.S. would not be regulated by global politicians. Our own politicians are corrupt and imcompetent enough, without overt collusion of the politicians from the rest of the world.”)
Fortunately, other Times Readers were ahead of the paper and the politicians in comments that could have been but weren’t probed in most media outlets.
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