“THANK GOODNESS they’ve left town, whoever they were,” sighed Washingtonians after days of traffic mayhem. Not satisfied with the security assured by their anonymity, the G-7 finance ministers roared around Washington in their black SUVs, led by police with sirens wailing, and accompanied by armed security guards peering menacingly out of the windows of the giant vehicles. After all, the ministers of the leading industrialized countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, and Canada) tend to regard themselves as the Magnificent Seven when the 184-nation International Monetary Fund and the World Bank hold their Spring meetings. Taxicabs are for representatives of lesser countries.

With all of the formal work completed by their sherpas before they arrived, only a few chores remained for the ministers. The first was to avoid expressions of incredulity when U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow explained why a budget deficit that has soared to 5 percent of GDP doesn’t really matter, and is “manageable and understandable.” And not a single snort of derision could be heard when he laid out deficit-cutting plans that the assembled ministers know will never pass Congress.