This week's summit in Washington on nuclear terrorism saw the largest gathering of heads of state since the UN was founded more than 60 years ago. But then the summit of G20 countries on the financial crisis the US held in Washinton in November 2008 was the biggest gathering of its sort since Bretton Woods half a century before, while the Copenhagen Summit of 192 countries on the environment last December was the biggest gathering of its sort ever.
Not that the earlier meetings produced results commensurate with their billing. A new Bretton Woods reorganising international financial flows as well as regulating them is what we were promised at the G20. The reality has been an avalanche of individual, national initiatives, as governments have tried to respond to the anger of their electorates at the behaviour of the banks, but precious little international co-ordination – still less any agreement on currencies a la Bretton Woods. If anything the world is now further from a global agreement on finance than we were when the leaders of all those countries met in Washington and then again in London in April last year.
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