Obama Has Little Leverage at G-20 Summit

[FarCenter]

The leader of the world’s largest economy may not be able to exert much influence on the biggest current threat to the global recovery.

President Barack Obama leaves this evening for a two-day Group of 20 summit in the French resort city of Cannes for discussions on Europe’s financial rescue plan with U.S. standing diminished on the international economic stage.

...
MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MF)’s bankruptcy filing on Oct. 31 underscored the potential for contagion to spread across the Atlantic. The brokerage wagered $6.3 billion on European sovereign debt.

“It is amazing: There’s this huge thing going on and we have virtually no influence on it,” said Phillip Swagel, a professor at the University of Maryland in College Park and an assistant Treasury secretary under President George W. Bush.

...
American leadership is further undercut by blame some foreign leaders cast on the U.S. for the global recession that followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008 and by the political standoff that brought the U.S. to the brink of a default on its debt just months ago. The tensions between Obama and congressional Republicans over taxes and spending are now standing in the way of meeting a $1.5 trillion debt reduction goal.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-02/obama-may-have-little-influence-on-outcome-of-g-20-meeting-analysts-say.html

[jwirr]

1. This started lots further back than Obama. W made us the laughing

stock of the world and his last gift to the world was the present cession. Obama has had few victories to undo that image.