Experts underwhelmed by G20 plan

ANALYSTS AND economists were largely unimpressed by the fare served up – or the lack of it – by the G20 leaders over the weekend.

“Plain-vanilla stuff they could have agreed on without holding a meeting,” said ex-IMF chief economist Simon Johnson.

“Call us hopelessly optimistic, but we would have thought the heads of state of 20 troubled economies, gathering in one place, could have agreed to specific co-ordinated actions to address the immediate problem of global recession,” said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at research firm High Frequency Economics.

None were quite as withering as BNP Paribas wit Paul Mortimer-Lee, however. “We did not hold out much hope for anything substantive from G20,” Mr Mortimer-Lee sniffed. “The meeting fully lived down to our expectations.”

The economist went on to tell clients that international meetings could be judged by a number of criteria, including the quality of platitudes on offer (“less platitudinous statements score higher”) and the carbon footprint left by leaders (“Did this meeting really need to take place? Was anything agreed that could not have been signed up to over the phone?”).

Mr Mortimer-Lee awarded a zero on the latter point, contributing to an overall grade of just 26 per cent for the G20 meeting. The meeting also garnered a zero score on the category of “immediacy” – that is, a measurement of the changes, if any, in the world as a result of the meeting.

As for specifics, the BNP Paribas economist could not find any.

“How much should interest rates be cut? How much fiscal expansion should there be? How much extra funding will the IMF get?”

The meeting was “strictly mom-and-apple-pie stuff – recession and financial crisis is bad, stimulus and effective regulation is good”.

Like many a teacher has done before him, Mr Mortimer-Lee signed off with words of devastating condescension for his G20 pupils. “This was a poor effort where the team turned up but did little else except chat. The answers given were vague and waffly and, aside from a promise to try harder next time, little was achieved. Stating the blindingly obvious is not the way to answer the most difficult questions on the paper since the second World War,” he said.

“The practical test was not even taken. By the time of the next examination there should be a new head boy, and we hope that he enables the class of 2009 to achieve more than that of 2008. Must try harder.”