Stock Market Today News Report and Stock Markets: Game, Quotes, Crash, Hours, Dummies, and Tips

John D. McKinnon reports on the financial crisis from Washington.

President Bush’s Rose Garden appearance Saturday morning was meant to provide a reassuring picture of stability — the world’s most powerful leader, standing alongside finance ministers of the seven old-line industrial powers, their flags flapping proudly in the autumn breeze.

But as recent financial shocks have showed, the so-called G-7 — the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K. — aren’t quite the pillars of strength they once were. And as the world begins to attack the root causes of the crisis, the G-7 might not even be the real center of power.

Instead, as this weekend’s events in Washington suggested, it could be an obscure entity called the G-20, which includes the old-line powers as well as big hitters from the rest of the world, such as China, India, Russia, Australia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and South Korea. Mr. Bush himself nodded to the G-20’s emerging importance in his brief remarks on Saturday. While he touted G-7 members’ pledges of cooperation to shore up the international financial system, the president also noted that the G-7 members agreed to “work with other nations, such as those that will be represented this afternoon in the G-20 forum.”

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson requested a separate meeting with the G-20 countries Saturday evening to explain all the actions that the U.S. is undertaking.

The reason for the attention is obvious: the G-20 nations include major players on the world economic stage, many of whom are big investors in the developed countries’ economies.

And a lot of these emerging economic powers are unhappy about what’s been going on lately. That’s particularly so, given that the G-20 itself was a product of the last global economic disaster, the Asian crisis of 1997-1998, and was supposed to help fix up the global economic order. Emerging countries believe they’ve done their part, but the big industrial powers haven’t.

“It’s pretty clear that the world has not moved on enough,” Australian treasurer Wayne Swan complained on Friday at a Brookings Institution panel. “There was too little interest in advanced economies in addressing the root causes of that crisis. And the lessons from that period now have to be learned so that we can move on with the essential reforms that are required.”

Those future reforms would include more uniform standards for judging the health of big financial institutions.

Already, there’s been widespread talk of a leaders summit to consider such reforms, including from French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Congressional Democratic leaders also have called for a G-8 leaders’ summit (the G-8 is the G-7 plus Russia) to discuss the economic crisis.

Still, it’s not yet clear that Mr. Bush will be standing together with elected leaders of the G-20 –or the G-7, or the G-8, or any other numerical variation — to announce such changes anytime soon. With just 100 days left in office as of this weekend, Mr. Bush has to focus on the task at hand – following up on this weekend’s pledges, and stabilizing the financial and credit markets.

A leaders’ meeting to discuss global financial architecture — something like a new version of the World War II Bretton Woods meeting — could simply take too long, says Brookings’ Robert Litan. And global finance ministers can work out enough coordinated action to start to restore confidence, “I’m not sure what’s left for the leaders to talk about,” he adds.

“My deepest feeling is what we need is action, not more talk,” says Sidney Weintraub of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But when the big leaders’ summit happens, look for it to include a lot of the G-20 countries.

“It’s critical, critical that we have a broader group of countries involved in coordinating and responding,” Australia’s Mr. Swan said on Friday. “It is just incredible that we don’t have a body which is representative of that part of the globe [Asia]. So the case for a G-20 involvement here I think is just not arguable.”

Filed under: Stock Market Crash 2008, Stock market crash, Stock market for dummies, Stock market game, Stock market hours, Stock market news, Stock market quotes, Stock market tips, Toronto Stocks, U.S. Stock Market, stock market history, stock market investing