The Preliminary G20 Financial Reform Meeting

Yves Smith cautions us to view the communique with caution.  She also says this on the quibble on the Basel II (which were wholly ineffective in the run-up to the crisis, and indeed contributed mightily to it) capital adequacy standards between the US and France.


Simon Johnson says that assumption that we need modern (characteristic of the last 30 years)  finance for economic growth, which all the G20ers seems to assume as gospel, is misconceived.  He also says that modern finance has provided, more than anything else, a means for the wealthy to capture state power.  The former point cannot be made emphatically enough after the bogus recapitalization of the banks.

Finally, perhaps to illustrate the latter point in a particularly enraging way, here's what some of the creative minds in finance have been up to lately.