The last time the leaders of the Group of 20 met, in Pittsburgh in September of last year, there was comparatively little disagreement. The world was still reeling from the shock of the 2008 financial crisis, and the unity of purpose the group had found at its first meeting in Washington that calamitous autumn was still in evidence.
But now it’s 2010, and the G20 will likely discover its members, without a worldwide crisis to lash them together across their vastly different cultures, interests, ideologies and economic circumstances, are less likely to agree on a common approach. Indeed, several European states are now heartily repenting of the group’s earlier consensus in favour of massive fiscal stimulus: government deficits there are now widely seen as the biggest threat to the economy, rather than the saviour of it. They will be unwilling to defer to the Obama administration’s more leisurely deficit reduction schedule.
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