Facts of the world economy in recession are readily available and generally agreed. Significant job losses abound in Spain, Ireland, United States and China to name but a few.

Global gross domestic product is set to shrink one and a half per cent this year. Some 20 million Chinese internal migrants return to their rural roots as demand for industrial output evaporates.

The financial system needs reform and demand needs a huge boost. Everyone agrees on the desired outcomes while policy options to stem the slide are disputed.

For more than a quarter century, Group of Seven finance ministers met several times each year.

The G7 industrialised countries Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and United States agreed that its limited 'representativeness' in the wake of successful opening up and integration of international capital markets required a broader group - inclusive of emerging economies.

So the G-20, an informal forum focused on global economic growth and stability, was established in 1999. Usually central bankers and ministers of finance meet and deliberate, coordinate policy as best they can.

This level of representation was thought however, insufficient and unequal to the task of taming the shrew that is fallout from Wall Street's meltdown.

So last year's meeting and that in London on April 2 would include leaders, presidents and prime ministers, backed up by their technocrats.

Summit cost

Britain's security and other costs of the summit are said to top £20 million - a fraction of the Summit's true cost.

Making up the G-20 are: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States of America, and the European Union.

Sleight of hand really. This is quite a bit more than 20 but that's an unimportant detail. G7 was the rich country club while the International Monetary Fund (IMF), instead of being the Bancor-creating world central bank that Keynes envisioned for stability after depression and war in 1944, merely took the place of the Colonial Office overseeing former colonies.

Can one sanely imagine IMF oversight of the shattered financial system and economy that is the US today after Wall Street's casino has enriched so few and bankrupted so many? Unthinkable!

Not even mentioned, except that the Chinese put a footnote on the page enquiring into the value of the dollar and its role as the world's currency.

The world may love US President Barack Obama and Europe may consider him more as celebrity - a veritable hurricane of fresh air after George Bush - but that does not stop French and German electorates from letting President Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel know how they feel about the inequity that the Obama-Geithner solution represents to them.

Nor can they ignore their publics' fear of inflation and deficit-creating stimuli.

The demonstrations in London were mild compared to the strength of negative public opinion on these matters.

Who blames America for creating this mess as it is now being called? It doesn't really matter. No one could have foreseen it; it just happened. Wrong!

Deregulation

Here's a quote from the New York Times of November 5, 1999 as the Glass-Steagall Act was jettisoned for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley sop to Wall Street: "The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system.

The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression."

Senator Byron L. Dorgan Democrat of North Dakota had this to say: "I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930s is true in 2010. I wasn't around during the 1930s or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980s when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernisation to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.'' Amazing!

Clearly, some were concerned, seeing dangers even if they could not clearly specify them. This behaviour was reckless, some deem it fraudulent.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde told the BBC's Hardtalk it was 'a-moral'. So with these little disagreements what expectations and what outcomes?

By the time you read this answers will be known. Yet there's no harm engaging in a bit of informed guessing about our effort to rescue the world.

After all, Prime Minister Gordon Brown let it slip in the UK Parliament's question time that he was embarked on saving the world.

First, President Obama urges G20 to not "short-change the future because of fear in the present".

And everyone will, after the requisite profiling for their national electorates, act upon the realisation they already deeply understand: this is a make or break opportunity.

If the Summit fails depression will ensue and life will be much more difficult. The rest of the world will understand that they have been willing participants in the game.

Were it not for Wall Street financiers and their derivatives, how else could recycling of their trade surpluses become more demand for BMWs, flat screen TVs and made in China consumer goods?

Rebalancing is absolutely necessary. The communiqué is going to be sufficiently bland - it will not apportion blame, will not define a new world financial system. But it shall not fail with a Nicolas Sarkozy walkout.

The last column used the term 'vulture capital' in the original. As published it was changed to 'venture capital' which has a specific meaning in finance.

'Vulture capital' describes an investment vehicle which, like the group that purchased FINSAC distressed assets - Jamaica Redeve-lopment Inc - does so for cents in the dollar in hope of a killing.

It is compared to a 'vulture' picking over a carcass, performing a role as important to the economy as that of the John Crow to environmental health.

Venture capital is an entirely different breed from operations purchasing bad/sour debt regardless of the adjectives used to describe it - whether troubled, distressed or now: toxic.

Incentive to buy bad debt in the Geithner proposal is government guarantee.

Venture capital requires no such incentive guarantee.

Its driving force is expectation of great profit from a few investments in a bulk that may fail miserably - hence the name 'venture' and its positive impact on innovation and sources of growth in capitalism: as for instance much of Silicon Valley operations.

wilbe65@yahoo.com