The truest thing Jack Shafer has ever written

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Friday, September 25, 2009 - 1:08 PM

As your humble blogger has ~~aged~~ matured, he finds himself invited to more shindigs that are logistically impossible for him to attend [He also has started referring to himself in the third person -- what's up with that?--ed. Oh, stuff it.]

This occasionally gnaws atmy psyche, because missing high-falutin' conferences preys on the same insecurity I have possessed since my grad school days -- that somewhere, at this very moment, there is an awesome, interesting conference going on, and I wasn't invited.

Fortunately, Slate's Jack Shafer makes me feel better about not attending The Atlantic's "First Draft of History" conference. Whenever I get one of these invites in the future, I'm going to have to re-read this paragraph:

I've got just three questions about "conferences" like these: Why, why, why? Other than hustling a little cash for the good cause that is the Atlantic magazine, what purpose do they serve? No, certifying members of the power elite does not qualify as a good cause. Will Gen. Petraeus make history by disclosing that he regrets the surge plan? Will David Axelrod volunteer that the Obama administration is a mess? Will Vikram Pandit fall to his knees and confess that the crash of 2008 was all his fault and beg to be shot? Not a chance. The participants will regift the presents they've given away dozens of times before, and the by-invitation-only audience will tear into the packages as if it's their ultimate Christmas.

COMMENTS (2)

EXPLORE:CULTURE, HIGH-FALUTIN CONFERENCES, PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS, SUMMITRY

An empty, symbolic gesture that I fully support

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Thursday, September 24, 2009 - 9:28 PM

As previously noted, the G-20 has done a much better job than I would have thought possible a year ago. It now looks like the Obama administration is close to earning consensus on a framework arrangement on macroeconomic policy coordination. The devil's in the implementation, of course, but the fact that they're close to consensus on such a framework is truly surprising.

Naturally, the French like to focus on peripheral issues that they are convinced contributed to last year's financial meltdown. Last April it was tax havens; this time France's pet peeve is placing a cap on bank bonuses (admittedly less peripheral than the tax havens).

It now looks like there will be agreement on that issue -- in part because the caps will not include specific monetary caps.

I raise all of this because Nicolas Sarkozy's "bonus tsar", Michel Camdessus, gave an interview to the Financial Times in which he was refreshingly candid about the issue:

France’s bonus tsar on Thursday said that traders’ bonuses were a largely symbolic issue for G20 leaders, and that in terms of money they were the “least important” item on the agenda.
Michel Camdessus, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, said: “If you look at this issue of remuneration in the global agenda of the G20, it is certainly – in terms of cash, money – the least important of all issues on the table.”
Mr Camdessus, charged by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, last month with monitoring bonuses of traders at state-aided banks, added: “But if you look at the symbolic value of the issue, it is one of the most important.”

Fine -- it's symbolically important. But if a symbolic agreement can allow the G-20 to keep their eyes on the macroeconomic prize, then three cheers for symbolic gestures.

COMMENTS (2)

EXPLORE:GLOBALIZATION, FINANCIAL MELTDOWN, G-20, GLOBAL GOVERNANCE, GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY, SUMMITRY

The occasional benefits of live summitry

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Saturday, August 29, 2009 - 2:57 PM

The New York Times' Alexei Barrionuevo and Simon Romero report on an entertaining leader summit for the Union of South American Nations. One bone of contention at the summit was a recent military accord between the United States and Colombia.

The proceedings were apparently broadcast live. This part stood out:

Mr. Chávez had previously described the [U.S.-Colombia] accord as a step toward war and had said it involved American designs on Venezuelan oil. He has been threatening to break off diplomatic relations with Colombia.
President Alan García of Peru, who has warm relations with the United States, took a shot at Mr. Chávez, noting Venezuela’s continued willingness to export oil to the United States.
“Man, why are they going to dominate the petroleum if you already sell it all to the United States?” Mr. García said. The remark drew laughter, though not from Mr. Chávez.

With the caveat that this as a speculative, half-assed generalization, it does seem that certain regions produce vastly more entertaining summits than other regions. Latin America and the Middle East produce summit meetings with open and entertaining feuding. Europe and the Pacific Rim, not so much.

Why is this? I don't think it's the number of "colorful leaders" -- if that was true, then Silvio Berlusconi would have made the EU summits rip-roaring affairs years ago. I don't think it's the degree of security tensions -- East Asia has more enduring rivalries than Latin America.

Seriously, why?

COMMENTS (10)

EXPLORE:GLOBAL GOVERNANCE, MEDIASPHERE, SUMMITRY

My take on the G-20 summit

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Friday, April 3, 2009 - 1:22 PM

Reading through the final G-20 communique and some of the after-action reports, a few quick thoughts on the London summit:

As it turns out, things went a lot better than they did at Doha. Admittedly a low bar, but still...
Remember how a lot of people (rightly) criticized the Bush administration for deciding that Iraq should be the central front in ~~the Global War on Terror~~ external contingency operations? That's kind of how I feel about much of the sturm und drang surrounding the summit about tax havens and hedge fund regulation. Neither of these things played a significant role in triggering the current financial crisis, so why all the hubbub?
I confess to finding the whole tax haven obsession to be faintly amusing. I've heard MEPs talk as if this step will be the cure to all of Europe's ills. As someone who worked on this stuff back in the day, I must applaud the G-20 for getting back to the point where the G-7 was at the very end of the Clinton administration (click here if you don't believe me). That's progress, mind you, but it's hardly earth-shattering.
Kevin Drum does an admirable job of comparing the draft communique with the final version to see what's been added. He missed a graf though. Seriously, I'm offering 10 Special Drawing Rights to anyone able to decipher this sucker:

In addition to reforming our international financial institutions for the new challenges of globalisation we agreed on the desirability of a new global consensus on the key values and principles that will promote sustainable economic activity. We support discussion on such a charter for sustainable economic activity with a view to further discussion at our next meeting. We take note of the work started in other fora in this regard and look forward to further discussion of this charter for sustainable economic activity.

It's all about the follow-through -- will the extra 1.1 trillion in IMF and MDB financing actually occur? More importantly, will it matter? An absence of trade finance is one reason for the contraction of the poorest countries of the world, but a bigger reason is that we're in a global friggin' recession. Ending that would be the best medicine for the global economy. Which means that...
While there were some significant accomplishments in London, there was no progress on the two biggest issues -- financial regulation and jump-starting the global economy. Admittedly, the degree of difficulty is high here, but on substance, the summit gets a C+.
On style, Obama does get an A-. I loved this bit from Helene Cooper's NYT story: "In a rare show of emotion from the international press, many in the room stood up and cheered after Mr. Obama was done [with his press conference]." C'mon, an American was on the global stage and not one shoe was thrown? Man, times have changed. Meawhile, as for Michelle Obama, there's this priceless AP quote from a Buckingham Palace spokesman: "We don't issue instructions on not touching the queen."