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THE CRYING need to strengthen global economic co-ordination and governance was thrown into sharp relief over the last year by the scale and reach of the post-Lehman crash. And so at Pittsburgh in September out stepped the emerging Group of 20, representing 85 per cent of world output, as the self-declared new “premier forum for our international economic co-operation”. Over the weekend in St Andrews in Scotland G20 finance ministers followed up with discussions on approaches to putting manners on international financial markets, on when to ease stimulus measures and on funding developing countries’ efforts to deal with global warming.

Little substantive progress was made but the meeting will be remembered for the surprise advocacy by British prime minister Gordon Brown of the idea of a tax on international capital transactions, known as a Tobin tax after its champion, James Tobin, a US Nobel prize-winning macroeconomist. The idea has been canvassed by the French, Germans and recently by the Austrians but scorned as impractical by the US and Britain, itself long opposed even to any idea of EU economic governance.