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The final "communique" from the G-20 meeting has emerged. Most of it is the happy togetherness talk you'd expect to emerge from such a conference, but this bit is fairly real:
The agreements we have reached today, to treble resources available to the IMF to $750 billion, to support a new SDR allocation of $250 billion, to support at least $100 billion of additional lending by the MDBs, to ensure $250 billion of support for trade finance, and to use the additional resources from agreed IMF gold sales for concessional finance for the poorest countries, constitute an additional $1.1 trillion programme of support to restore credit, growth and jobs in the world economy. Together with the measures we have each taken nationally, this constitutes a global plan for recovery on an unprecedented scale.That's money that will largely go towards supporting the economies of developing countries.Which means that they are less likely to collapse. Which means that we're less likely to have to deal with nation-state chaos atop the turmoil in the markets. I also like Yglesias's point that this is a fair coup for liberal internationalism."More importantly," he says. "[this] will make sure that the IMF can continue to function as an important and valuable element of international governance. Getting this done would probably constitute more diplomatic work than the Bush administration managed to pull off in eight years."The whole thing is here.
