It ended with a great fanfare, but put any G20 euphoria on hold

[CHIMO]

The governor of the Bank of England made quite a stir recently when, on the same day, he challenged the prime minister's plans for a further fiscal stimulus - more tax cuts and increases in public spending - and was prominently photographed taking tea with the Queen. This latter occasion was reported as only the first meeting between our present monarch and a Bank of England governor.

This was not quite true. When she was 13, Princess Elizabeth was despatched by her grandmother, Queen Mary, on an educational visit to the Bank of England, where the then Governor, Montagu Norman, showed her Britain's gold reserves. This was in 1939, on the eve of the outbreak of the second world war, which was generally considered to have been caused - at least in part - by the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression and its aftermath.

As I noted some months ago, a major factor in the collapse of economic co-operation and the proliferation of beggar-my-neighbour policies during the 1930s was the failure of the World Economic Conference of June 1933, held in London, but most certainly not in anything resembling the ExCel Centre.

So the good news is that the summit was not a disaster. But it is a case not for euphoria as "for this relief much thanks". Twenty leaders return home to rising unemployment and all manner of protectionist pressures.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/05/g20-global-recession

[On the Road]

1. A Strange Way to Judge Whether the Summit Was Good News

So the good news is that the summit was not a disaster. But it is a case not for euphoria as "for this relief much thanks". Twenty leaders return home to rising unemployment and all manner of protectionist pressures.

No matter what happened at the summit, good or bad, every leader present would have returned to the same conditions.