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?

More info here.

Comments

[Mango Punch]

No matter what else anyone has to say about Sarko, you have to admit his wife is so fucking hot, Carla Bruni Sarkozy

[NolongerTofuSushi]

What are all of those protestors doing again? I am with Nick on that one, but I have a theory.

Perhaps they are a welcoming committee for BHO? Sort of like that one in the pilot for the old Battlestar Gallactica? The one with Pa Cartwright.

[SugarFree]

When I look at the G20 summit protests all I can think of is: "You fuckers need to get a job. Seriously, you're carrying around a 14-foot papier-m?ch? canary and bitching about the horrors of capitalism while wearing iPods."

Round them up, and deport them to North Korea. They can come back when they grow the fuck up.

[dbcooper]

Haven't seen any protesters in London so far, but then I am kept in the basement during work hours.

[Taktix?]

Round them up, and deport them to North Korea. They can come back when they grow the fuck up.

Nothing conveys adulthood like living off of tree bark and moss for a few years...

[SugarFree]

Nothing teaches you a work ethic faster than an empty stomach.

[Nick]

Round them up, and deport them to North Korea.

How libertarian of you.

(drink)

[SugarFree]

Oh hush, Nick. You know I'm just kidding. I'd never do that to the poor North Korean people, they have enough stupidity to deal with now.

[Xeones]

"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."

Shut the fuck up, Maynard.

[Seamus]

And couldn't they have done using a free web-conferencing service and save taxpayers the world over some precious coin?

No, silly. Being prudent with money won't stimulate the economy. We need more of the wasteful-spending dog that bit us.

[Seamus]

Uh, make that "more of *the hair of* the wasteful-spending dog".

[creech]

Guess it was a couple days too early for Obamessiah to ride down the Mall on a donkey while Londoners strewed palm leaves in his path.

[threeofclubs]

from watching bbc news half of the protesters seem to be reporters.
and the other half seem to be students with cameras.
I want to see more action.

[Nick]

I know, SF, it's just been a rough morning and I'm looking for any reason* to drink.

*Hey, look at that. (drink!)

[Pi Guy]

"Guess it was a couple days too early for Obamessiah to ride down the Mall on a donkey while Londoners strewed palm leaves in his path."

I hear that that's on the schedule for tomorrow. Cable news will be covering.

[Reinmoose]

Sugarfree -
if you sent them all to NK it would easily quintuple the number of iPods in the country.

[Isaac Bartram]

...protesters are hitting the streets to smash windows and have a good time...

Think of how all that reglazing windows and repairing damaged property will stimulate the economy.

Don't you guys know anything about ekonomix?

[Reinmoose]

I hear that that's on the schedule for tomorrow. Cable news will be covering organizing the event.

[P Brooks]

Is there a platoon of papier mache Krugmans performing close drill, while chanting, "Spend, motherfucker, spend"?

I hope so.

[J sub D]

"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."...

Sorry to burst your bubble Chosen One, government interference in markets is most certaqinly in dispute by many thinking people.

[NolongerTofuSushi]

I want to see more action.

Rule 34 (or is it 32?)

[Tom G]

Just want to say, I happen to enjoy Billy Bragg's music a great deal. It sounds like you are gently implying that the protestors don't WANT to hear him...or is it that he's inciting them ?
I've never been the type to refuse to listen to music I like just because I vehemently disagree with the singer's personal political beliefs. (I'm somewhere in the anarchist - left-libertarian area myself).

[Gabe]

G20 "Terrorist Plot" Exposed As Teenagers With Plastic Guns And Fireworks .

Don't be dense,many of the protestors are complaining about trillions of dollars being stolen from taxpayers in oreder to fund JP Morgan, Royal Bank of Scotaland, Goldman Sachs Rothchild bank etc.

now the media and agent provacatuers are manipulating the public opinion against the "anarchists".

so that tomorrow they can round them up and beat protestors at will, while you guys cheer on the SS troopers.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/images/august2007/230807shoes.jpg

[SugarFree]

Is there a platoon of papier mache Krugmans performing close drill, while chanting, "Spend, motherfucker, spend"?

[shudder] Thanks for the nightmares, dick.

[JW]

SF--Not to worry. A squadron of plywood and mylar Hayeks and Schumpters swarmed the Krugmans and devoured them. When they turned on the protesters, they all scatterred.

The Schumpters were last seen marching, slowly but steadily, towards the G20 summit. The Hayeks stopped and had a tea.

[Nick]

Are Austrian economics practiced in Austria? Why do I have the sinking suspicion they are not?

[NolongerTofuSushi]

Nick,

Your suspicians are correct. The lean more toward an old dead German fellow.

[Hal]

Rocky and Bullwinkle! Haha

I think folk are rioting because they have a sense of fear of being enslaved with taxes by an elite class.

They're hearing talk about inflation, crashing dollar, a call for a world currency, etc.

What surprises me is that the gold market hasn't reacted to this kind of news as drastically as I expected. I've been following the precious metal markets with the real time widget ExactPrice and gold really hasn't moved that much sense yesterday. You would think that all the talk of a US dollar being replaced as the reserve currency would send the gold value way up.

Maybe all the G-20 news will just take a longer time to sink in for investors.

[Nick]

The lean more toward an old dead German fellow.

That's what I was afraid of.

[dbcooper]

Update! Bank tube station (centre of "the city" aka the financial district) has been closed due to protesters. Guess that is exciting or something.

[SugarFree]

dbcooper,

Seriously? Anti-capitalist protesters shut down public transit?

Idiots. Next they'll burn down a dole office.

[NolongerTofuSushi]

I think folk are rioting because they have a sense of fear of being enslaved with taxes by an elite class.

That only happens in Nashville when a state income tax bill is up for a vote.

The folk you are watching don't get taxed, or they want higer taxes, or some crazy stuff.

[NolongerTofuSushi]

Seriously? Anti-capitalist protesters shut down public transit?

The same ones who are all for "the workers" especially when they are chaining themselves together in intersections to keep people from going to work?

[SugarFree]

The only substantive difference in annoyance between the G20 protests and the pep rally on campus today is a lack of giant puppets.

[NolongerTofuSushi]

Have the stilt walking clowns arrived yet? I can't see a TV from here.

[mark]

And couldn't they have done using a free web-conferencing service and save taxpayers the world over some precious coin?

Ron Paul would have showed up in person.

[Taktix?]

It's pretty sad when a once-vital form of political activism becomes a good time activity for kids on Spring Break...

[NolongerTofuSushi]

Ron Paul would have showed up in person.

He has been a hologram since the late 1990s.

[Brandon]

One wonders if the decadence of the world leaders' dinner menu will make the same splash it did during the food crisis conference. Expensive British food is still British food.

[P Brooks]

One wonders if the decadence of the world leaders' dinner menu will make the same splash it did during the food crisis conference.

Probably not; the Japanese Treasury guy won't be there, this time.

*Splash*

*Drunk Japanese guy*

Get it?

[Brandon]

If you were the finance minister for an industrialized country right now you'd be getting drunk on cold medicine too.

I wonder if that guy is still alive. Don't the Japanese kill themselves after fails like that?

[Jim Bob]

"We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all."

-Dante Alighieri

[Sean W. Malone]

I'm still trying to figure out how the central planners of the 20 largest economies are able to keep deluding themselves about there ever having been a free market... What's so hard to understand about that idea?

[Max]

Let's hope this summit actually gets something accomplished because I think most of these countries are almost in dire straights. Saw some good info about the Obama-Brown discussion, http://www.newsy.com/videos/obama_brown_shoulder_to_shoulder_for_g20/

[dbcooper]

dbcooper,

Seriously? Anti-capitalist protesters shut down public transit?

Idiots. Next they'll burn down a dole office.

Yeah, it was closed, but I doubt that many of them are there for "principled activism." Then again some of them would claim that it is justified as Transport for London uses a private services company (Mainline) for maintenance contracts. *Sighs*

That company also happens to be a lot smarter when it comes to contract law ... *sighs again*

Seems that RBS was the focus of much of what went on earlier today:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7975597.stm

Protesters have stormed the Royal Bank of Scotland in London as thousands of people descended on the City ahead of the G20 summit of world leaders.

Demonstrators launched missiles and forced their way into the bank after clashes with police in the capital.

Nineteen people were arrested on Wednesday, while some police and protesters were injured in scuffles.

Climate change activists have pitched tents in the street, while anti-war campaigners are holding a rally.

The protests came as US President Barack Obama spoke of the "sense of urgency" needed to confront the financial crisis after he met Prime Minister Gordon Brown at Downing Street.

By Wednesday afternoon the prime minister's spokesman said they were hoping to reach a successful conclusion to the summit.

At the height of the demonstrations, the police estimated there were up to 4,000 demonstrators in the City and officers cordoned off a number of streets.

The BBC's Ben Brown said there had been an "increasingly ugly mood" in Threadneedle Street after protesters smashed RBS windows with missiles, including coins and computer keyboards, and entered the building. The branch had been closed already as a precautionary measure.

Mounted police and riot officers used shields to push demonstrators back and officers said they entered the RBS building just after 1400 BST "in support of building security".

The ?703,000 pension arrangement of RBS former chief executive, Sir Fred Goodwin, has sparked public anger.

An RBS spokesman said: "The safety of our employees and our customers is of paramount importance to us."

However, by mid afternoon the BBC's Danny Shaw said police sources believed the mood had changed, with the atmosphere becoming less tense.

Officers were on the look out for people who were "of interest".

Earlier, officers were pelted with empty beer cans, fruit and flour outside the Bank of England as the crowd of demonstrators had attempted to reach a peaceful climate change protest in nearby Bishopsgate.

Hundreds of Climate Camp demonstrators - behind direct action protests at Heathrow Airport and power stations in North Yorkshire and Kent - pitched tents in protest against carbon markets.

The BBC's Mark Georgiou said there was an "almost Glastonbury atmosphere" at the demonstration outside the European Climate Exchange, which featured "music and meditation".

Several hundred anti-war demonstrators have also marched to a rally in Trafalgar Square from the US Embassy in central London.

The BBC's Dominic Casciani said it had a "completely different mood" to the protests in the City, and demonstrators were in peaceful mood.

Earlier, protest groups under the G20 Meltdown banner had marched to the Bank of England in the City urging those who had lost their homes, jobs, savings or pensions to join them in following four "horsemen of the apocalypse" to "lay siege" to financial institutions.

Many City workers have dressed in casual clothes after banks and other institutions were warned they may be targeted.

Protester Daniel Blinkhorn, from Brighton, was among those marching from London Bridge station to the Bank. He said the G20 leaders had a "real opportunity to green the global economy".

Housing association worker Tony Streeter told the BBC: "I'm here because I think people are angry about what's going on in the world there's too much greed."

Scotland Yard said a total of 23 people had been arrested in connection with the protests, including four on Tuesday.

The four people were charged after officers were alerted to a group trying to break into a building in the Holborn area of central London, police said.

On Wednesday, police questioned demonstrators travelling in an armoured vehicle dressed in helmets and overalls.

Police say 11 people have been arrested on suspicion of possessing police uniforms and for road traffic offences.

Six police forces are part of the ?7.5m security plan, led by London's Met.

[ed]

protesters are hitting the streets to smash windows and have a good time

From what I've seen, it's two people smashing a window and 400 people holding up digital cameras to record and upload identical "footage" to their crappy websites and YouTube et al. Why get beaten to a pulp when you can safely get your narcissistic fix by uploading?

If these unemployed crusaders really wanted to make a point, they'd put a seige on Joe Cassano's posh London townhouse. Better yet, drag the AIG Financial Services mastermind out of his domicile and behead him. That would, um, turn a few heads.

[R C Dean]

Whoa, the BBC reports that "Demonstrators launched missiles" at the London protests?

That sounds dead serious.

[Gilbert Martin]

Obama's policy prescriptions are too socialist for even the european socialists.

He has truly earned the official designation of Commie Pinko Punk President (CPPP).

[MaterialMonkee]

"Seriously? Anti-capitalist protesters shut down public transit?

Idiots. Next they'll burn down a dole office."

hahhahahaha

[dbcooper]

So, how much will you guys pay me to go along tomorrow and carry a "Shut the fuck up, LoneWacko" sign? 😉

[MaterialMonkee]

@dbcooper

Some photocopies of 50 quid notes being thrown at hippies would be nice to see

Where's your sense of tradition?

[dbcooper]

@MaterialMonkee

Nice one. As an antip I ain't got no tradition though 😉

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