So the G20 leaders are descending on Washington. They will eat, meet (average allotted speaking time per nation, 15 minutes) and head home. The world leaders who are gathering here include not only your prime minister and his chief of staff, but the treasurer, assorted Treasury officials, and staff from your embassy, including Ambassador Richardson, a man who knows a thing or two about how Washington works.

Which is why we have to give weight to his view that  the G20 meeting is worthwhile even though our outgoing President has no power to commit President-elect Barack Obama, and Obama himself remained sequestered in Chicago following his “There is only one president at a time” policy. Richardson says that since the financial crisis is global, there is logic in a group of leaders coming together so long as expectations of results are reasonable. He also thinks that Australia’s regulatory system has held up very well and has credibility around the world, in part because it is some way between the U.S. and the European models.

 

Still, not everyone is convinced that it was a good idea for French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to insist on this meeting, and to threaten Bush that they would convene one in New York if he refused to play host in Washington. Bush is in no position to do much about the international “financial architecture” even if he were so inclined, which he isn’t. And the last thing Obama wanted was for the Europeans to give him a deadline – 100 days from now, or about one month after he is sworn in – to lay out his plans for international coordination and regulation.