Dark Skinny

The first assessments of the current G20 Financial Summit are out. And amid the muddle and fumblings of other countries as to what can be done, one leader seems to have quietly taken the reins of this gathering with a definitive plan. Gordon Brown, the current PM of UK, introduced this financial plan to the EU last month. A few European countries, then virtually all states decided to run with it because it was so good. Now he has introduced this plan to the G20 Meeting. I certainly don't agree with all of his plan, but at least Mr Brown has brought the G20 together with a reasonably focused response. This, after all, is what a leader should do. President Bush is hosting the meeting - and reportedly all he brought to the meeting table was a neat haircut and a weary smile. He also served tea and coffee during the intervals (without any help at all, so they say). The following short article is from the UK Guardian, which includes quotes of high praise from Paul Krugman, the well known and highly respected US economist.

"From the way Gordon Brown was talking about the G20 summit at his Downing Street press conference this week, you could be forgiven for thinking that he sees it as his chance to audition for the role of chancellor of the exchequer for the world. But if that doesn't work out, and if the voters boot him out at the general election, he has brilliant future as a university professor.

That's not my verdict but Paul Krugman's - and he's just won the Nobel Prize for economics, so he should know. Krugman hailed Brown as the saviour of the world economy in a New York Times column last month and last night he and other economists met the prime minister after he arrived in New York for the G20 summit.

After the meeting, Krugman told the BBC's Nick Robinson, for a Today programme interview, why he was so impressed by what Brown had done.

We had this completely muddle-headed response from the United States, the US Treasury: "Something must be done, the markets are frozen up." But then the plan made no sense. It was really great confusion, and not much coming out of the eurozone. Then Gordon Brown comes along and says we are going to recapitalise the banks, which is what economists like myself had been saying. It provided the signal that we could do a straight-forward, well-focused response to this crisis. Britain is not one of the world's biggest economies but Britain has ended up setting the template for everyone else's response, which is quite amazing.

Then Robinson asked Krugman how Brown had gone down with the academics. Krugman was effusive.

He's pretty good. If this prime minister thing doesn't work out, he's got a pretty good career as an academic [ahead of him]. It was amazing. The level of discussion was, particularly for someone accustomed to the US for the last few years, awesome."