G-20 is One Big Happy Family, Sez Obama and Discounted Brit PM
As the Group of 20 meetings get underway in London, protesters are hitting the streets to smash windows and have a good time (it's not fully clear what they're protesting, though an appearance by leftoid warbler Billy Bragg might be the root cause of anger). And Barack Obama and Gordon Brown are playing Rocky and Bullwinkle to Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel's Boris and Natasha.
Obama and Brown are reporting that the developed world is not split over what to do next vis a vis world economic panic; Sarko and Merkel are threatening various forms of walkout if the "light-touch Anglo-Saxon" method of financial regulation isn't replaced with an apparently Gallo-Teutonic stranglehold.
At a joint press conference with Mr Brown, Mr Obama denied that there was any real disagreement on the need for governments to boost their economies, just normal discussions as to how best to do it.
"The truth is that that's just arguing at the margins," he said. "The core notion that government has to take some steps to deal with a contracting market place and to restore growth is not in dispute."…
Sure, Barack, sure. Maybe it's that consensus about lard-ass-sized government that's one of the problems in the first place. And couldn't they have done using a free web-conferencing service and save taxpayers the world over some precious coin?