Digest

"For more than 30 years in economic journalism I have written about many summits. Their job has been to rubber stump the Washington consensus, and offer an illusory picture of collective action and grip – when the truth has been "market states" running up the white flag before the ever advancing battalions of global finance. This summit is decisively different – the most substantive of its type since 1944. It offers a break with the Washington consensus, free market ideology and financial turbo capitalism – and is assembling the world around a new order and set of ideas."

Will Hutton, "G20: Best summit since 1944" (uma leitura bastante optimista dos resultados da Cimeira de ontem)

" In the early years of this decade, China began running large trade surpluses and also began attracting substantial inflows of foreign capital. If China had had a floating exchange rate — like, say, Canada — this would have led to a rise in the value of its currency, which, in turn, would have slowed the growth of China’s exports. But China chose instead to keep the value of the yuan in terms of the dollar more or less fixed. To do this, it had to buy up dollars as they came flooding in. As the years went by, those trade surpluses just kept growing — and so did China’s hoard of foreign assets."

Paul Krugman, "China's dollar trap" (que apesar de reconhecer que a Cimeira superou as expectativas - "realistically, most big-time international meetings produce nothing; this did something significant." - continua a colocar o dedo na ferida: as relações económicas entre uma China com super-avit comercial e com uma moeda desvalorizada e uns EUA com défices comerciais "crónicos")