G-20 annual progress card on the International Monetary System reforms

EDWIN TRUMAN, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics tracks the progress made by the G-20 over the past year on reform of the international monetary system over five key areas: i) surveillance of the global economy and financial system, ii) the international lender-of-last-resort mechanisms (global financial safety nets), iii) he management of global capital flows, iv) reserve assets and reserve currencies, and v) IMS governance.
In his policy brief for the PIIE Quarterly, “G-20 Reforms of the International Monetary System: An Evolution”, he states that little progress had been made on most of the topics except for commitments by a few countries to allow their automatic stabilizers to operate in the current slowdown and marginal steps forward on the issues of the lender-of-last-resort issues, and codification of the progress made on the management of capital flows. He concludes that although the G-20 summit at Cannes resulted in some useful mutual education, there wasn’t much more in terms of concrete accomplishments.

Bandung 55 comes to age!!

SHYAM SARAN, fellow at the Center for Policy Research and former Indian Foreign Secretary, calls upon India to make relations with Indonesia, a G-20 power and neighbor, the centrepiece of its Look East policy pointing to commonalities such as plural, diverse, secular democratic polity, cultural affinities buffeted by religious extremism. In an article in Business Standard, "Rising Indonesia", he states that it was incumbent upon India to upgrade its economic and security partnership with Indonesia beyond the current joint maritime patrols to grow naval capabilities and shape an open, inclusive and loosely structured security architecture in Asia.
 

Test of Effectiveness for the G-20

ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN, fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics states that while the monopoly on power and influence wielded by the west was being broken for real with the G20, what was most significant was the impact of the de-cartelization of power and influence on the role of ideas.  In an op-ed in The Business Standard, "The G-20, Power, and Ideas", he states that the fate of two bad ideas (i) western leadership of the IMF and the World Bank and (ii) indispensability of the Doha round to the health of the world economy, could serve as a testing ground for the proposition that the G-20 might be better for the marketplace of ideas than the G-7.

Pole positions in clean-energy

The Pew Environment Group led by Director JOSHUA REICHERT analyze trends in the clean energy sector within the G-20 economies over the past 5 years and are sanguine about the sector that is forecast to grow by 25% to $200 billion in 2010 on the back of a prioritization on clean energy funding by the G-20 governments. In a report titled “WHO’S WINNING THE CLEAN ENERGY RACE? Growth, Competition and Opportunity in the World’s Largest Economies”, they state that nations such as China, Brazil, U.K, Germany and Spain with their strong, national clean energy policies were leading the clean energy economy sweepstakes and other countries would need to more actively evaluate policies to stimulate clean energy investment and compete effectively for clean energy jobs and manufacturing.

Non-proliferation and the G20

GREGORY SCHULTE, Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction at the U.S. National Defence University proposes the adoption of the G20 as a forum to advance non-proliferation and claims that an endorsement from G20 would carry greater diplomatic weight than that of the G8. In an article for Proliferation Analysis, "Fighting Nuclear Proliferation at 20", he argues that despite the G20 being more unwieldy than the G8, it would prove a better forum to start laying the framework for future initiatives on non-proliferation.

Yet another East Asia grouping

Stephen Grenville and Mark Thirlwel, fellows at the Lowy Institute for International Policy advocate the creation of a caucus of the six East Asian members of the G-20; China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, India and Australia, arguing that doing so would provide an opportunity to pool resources for research and the preparation of policy papers in turn helping the region promote an agenda at the G-20 that would support regional interests and establish G-20's relevance.In a Policy Brief, "A G-20 caucus for East Asia", they conclude that the establishment of an East Asian caucus would offer economies of scale in policy research and development and also contribute positively to the development of a regional economic architecture.