Post World War II leaders have held various summits and ongoing institutions to resolve issues facing the future of world peace and stability. Much of it has to do with trade and finance and in recent years the G20 was established in 2008, mainly due to the key role played by the United States and Germany in bringing it about. Economic policy is, therefore, high on the agenda and bodies dealing in it are the main players.
It became a leader’s level summit after Paul Martin, the Canadian foreign-minster and future Prime Minister, moved that it be so. He was the chief architect of the meeting as a finance-minister level in the first instance.
It as primarily a response to the debt crisis of the 1990’s that began in Mexico and was followed by the Asian Debt Crisis of 1997. The economic collapse of Russia and then the impact on the United States. This most prominently saw the collapse of the hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, in 1998.
With the rapidly occurring globalisation of the last few years the G7 and G8, along with the Bretton Woods System, were unable to generate financial stability. The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2010 have pushed the matter further into urgency.
With so much at stake this last summit was vitally important to work out strategies to prevent the collapse of the economy. With the situation in just about every country reaching another critical phase and unemployment at its highest in many of them the unrest will grow unless something happens to change it.
With so much at stake one wonders about why President Trump, the elected head of government in the USA, chose to absent himself from the meeting while the head of the World Bank delivered his address. Taking his place at the table and seated between leaders was Ivanka Trump.
The question is whether Trump is able to be a team player in something as important as this or whether he is so aloof from reality that it does not phase him? His attitude is certainly a lot different to his predecessors who fought hard to get this summit and use it to benefit the world. Without strong support from the USA the next financial crisis may be a bigger disaster than any before it.
