G8/G20 Discussion Thread - It's on now

[Leto]

Well, the $1.3 billion party has started. The G8 leaders have congregated in the cottage heartland, home of the Muskoka chair* - Hunstville Ontario - to begin their conference. This is to be followed by the G20 conference over the weekend in Toronto. The city has virtually been shut down as security measures have turned this place into a fortress with a metal wire fence cutting through downtown streets to protect the proceedings from the usual list of protesters.



What are your thoughts on these conferences? I question the price tag and am loath to think that is necessary. On the other hand, I think it's great that the G8 now try to incorporate the G20 and emerging nations into the proceedings to build the bridge that was lacking in the past.

this is the first time that both conferences have been held at the same time and in the same place.

Summit news:
Topic : Toronto G20 Summit - thestar.com




*

ps... the Muskoka Chair:




PPS: My nephew is a customs officer at the airport. He managed to get some pictures of Obama's arrival:



The Plane! The plane!:







The usual dignitaries (Ontario Premier, Toronto Mayor, some mounties)

[settie]

Too much money blown on fat rich leaders.

They need to make this less of a high profile event, and much more discreet.

I mean, christ. They blow 1.3 billion (my god...billion...) dollars to TALK about how much they are in debt? *facepalm*

[Leto]

yes, well, the excuse is the cost of security. I heard that the G8/G20 in Toronto is using roughly 5 times the number of police as Pittsburgh did for the G20. So, the extra cost for this summit should be roughly 5x the Pittsburgh cost which equals 90 million. So, where is the extra 1.2 billion going to?

[settie]

Originally Posted by Leto

yes, well, the excuse is the cost of security. I heard that the G8/G20 in Toronto is using roughly 5 times the number of police as Pittsburgh did for the G20. So, the extra cost for this summit should be roughly 5x the Pittsburgh cost which equals 90 million. So, where is the extra 1.2 billion going to?

eeeeeexactly.

[Lucifer]

I hear the journalists really like the fake lake in the media center!

[roachboy]

so while i saw footage and/or stories of the sort that seem almost requisite for a g-x (7/8 to 20) meeting of peaceful demonstrators being attacked by riot police....

Peaceful G20 protest at Queen & Spadina on Vimeo

Peaceful G20 protest at Queen & Spadina on Vimeo

CBC News - Toronto - G20 protest violence prompts over 400 arrests

i think the real problem with the g20 is the incoherence that's being generated in policy terms by this farce called neo-liberalism/monetarism that will not finish dying.

to wit:

Guest post: El-Erian on a disappointing G20 compromise
Posted by Guest writer on Jun 28 13:00.

Pimco’s chief executive Mohamed El-Erian considers whether the G20 Summit in Toronto created a constructive compromise on financial stability, or generated a losing plan to turn around a slowing global economy.

________

We are digesting this morning an unusually long communique from the G20 Summit in Toronto. This self-congratulatory statement is worth reading for what it says and how it says it-both of which make me worry even more about the future of a post-global financial crisis world that is in desperate need for better cross-border policy coordination and harmonization.

Some will attribute the length of the “G20 Toronto Summit Declaration”-49 main points and another 82 in 3 annexes-to the pronouncement in the very first paragraph that this was the “first Summit of the G20 in its new capacity as the premier forum for our international economic cooperation.” And we should have no doubt that the G20 is a much more representative global policy forum than the outmoded G7/G8. Yet, there may be much more to the unusual length of the communique.

I suspect that many veterans of multilateral gatherings will see this communique as typical of those drafted by a committee whose members have different views and priorities, and speak to different national audiences. Indeed, we are already seeing the G20 communique being spun very differently in national capitals.

If anything, the outcome of the G20 is a confirmation of what many expected and feared-namely, and in sharp contrast to the April 2009 G20 London Summit, an inability to reconcile divergent views of the world. If anything, we are being exposed this morning to the realities of different national historical experiences, different national initial conditions, and different national views on how economies should and do work.

The differences are most visible in the sections on fiscal adjustment and growth. They are also evident in the discussion of financial sector reform. Indeed, there is something for everyone!

Before we rejoice too much about the ability of the G20 to deliver constructive compromises, we should think carefully about the consequences of leaving major issues unresolved and, thus, essentially kicking the can down the road when it comes to serious analysis and courageous decisions. Consider the following three points as a partial illustration of this risk.

First, the communique illustrates the extent to which we now live in a multi-polar world with no dominant economic party and with excessively weak multilateral coordination mechanisms. The result is what game theorist label a “non-cooperative game,” with a very high likelihood of sub-optimal outcomes.

Second, taken at face value, the communique speaks to a relative world in which the US will be the only major country to pursue expansionary policies while others focus on addressing budgetary consolidation-either because they have to or because they wish to. This is yet another factor that points to an increasingly unstable global configuration over time.

Third, we will likely face growing bilateral frictions due to the inability to use this weekend’s G20 gathering to properly address what I argued in a Friday FT column to be an incomplete and narrow characterization of the “growth now” versus “austerity now” debate.

The bottom line is as follows: I worry that, absent some urgent mid-course corrections, this weekend’s G20 gathering has failed to mark a much needed turning point for a slowing global economy with persistently high unemployment in industrial countries. Instead, it reinforces the concern than we are in for a future of muted growth, deleveraging, periodic debt dislocations in some countries, and higher protectionist pressures. Populations in Europe and the US may have much more to worry about than seeing so many of their teams knocked out early from the World Cup tournament in South Africa.

________

The writer is chief executive and co-chief investment officer of Pimco. El-Erian’s previous commentary on the G20’s earlier Busan summit is available here.

FT Alphaville Guest post: El-Erian on a disappointing G20 compromise

and.....

The Third Depression
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: June 27, 2010




Recessions are common; depressions are rare. As far as I can tell, there were only two eras in economic history that were widely described as “depressions” at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of mass unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 1929-31.


Neither the Long Depression of the 19th century nor the Great Depression of the 20th was an era of nonstop decline — on the contrary, both included periods when the economy grew. But these episodes of improvement were never enough to undo the damage from the initial slump, and were followed by relapses.

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

In 2008 and 2009, it seemed as if we might have learned from history. Unlike their predecessors, who raised interest rates in the face of financial crisis, the current leaders of the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank slashed rates and moved to support credit markets. Unlike governments of the past, which tried to balance budgets in the face of a plunging economy, today’s governments allowed deficits to rise. And better policies helped the world avoid complete collapse: the recession brought on by the financial crisis arguably ended last summer.

But future historians will tell us that this wasn’t the end of the third depression, just as the business upturn that began in 1933 wasn’t the end of the Great Depression. After all, unemployment — especially long-term unemployment — remains at levels that would have been considered catastrophic not long ago, and shows no sign of coming down rapidly. And both the United States and Europe are well on their way toward Japan-style deflationary traps.

In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery. But no: over the last few months there has been a stunning resurgence of hard-money and balanced-budget orthodoxy.

As far as rhetoric is concerned, the revival of the old-time religion is most evident in Europe, where officials seem to be getting their talking points from the collected speeches of Herbert Hoover, up to and including the claim that raising taxes and cutting spending will actually expand the economy, by improving business confidence. As a practical matter, however, America isn’t doing much better. The Fed seems aware of the deflationary risks — but what it proposes to do about these risks is, well, nothing. The Obama administration understands the dangers of premature fiscal austerity — but because Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress won’t authorize additional aid to state governments, that austerity is coming anyway, in the form of budget cuts at the state and local levels.

Why the wrong turn in policy? The hard-liners often invoke the troubles facing Greece and other nations around the edges of Europe to justify their actions. And it’s true that bond investors have turned on governments with intractable deficits. But there is no evidence that short-run fiscal austerity in the face of a depressed economy reassures investors. On the contrary: Greece has agreed to harsh austerity, only to find its risk spreads growing ever wider; Ireland has imposed savage cuts in public spending, only to be treated by the markets as a worse risk than Spain, which has been far more reluctant to take the hard-liners’ medicine.

It’s almost as if the financial markets understand what policy makers seemingly don’t: that while long-term fiscal responsibility is important, slashing spending in the midst of a depression, which deepens that depression and paves the way for deflation, is actually self-defeating.

So I don’t think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs. It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

Op-Ed Columnist - The Third Depression - NYTimes.com

you'd think this neolibeal hogwash would dissipate given its obvious political failure, it's empirical failures and its inability to provide anything remotely like a coherent vantage on the continuing crisis of transnational capitalism...

intellectual paralysis is powerful.

[Baraka_Guru]

Originally Posted by roachboy

so while i saw footage and/or stories of the sort that seem almost requisite for a g-x (7/8 to 20) meeting of peaceful demonstrators being attacked by riot police....

For five years up until last autumn, I worked in that neighbourhood. I bought my guitar at Steve's there, and I once bought my nephew a video game at that EB Games. I walked that stretch about twice a day. It was odd to see that display in that street, in this country even. Though it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. The photo of the burning police car in front of Steve's was particularly disturbing....

you'd think this neolibeal hogwash would dissipate given its obvious political failure, it's empirical failures and its inability to provide anything remotely like a coherent vantage on the continuing crisis of transnational capitalism...

intellectual paralysis is powerful.

Well, I think the powers that be like to look at neoliberalism as the status quo, because of what it had accomplished for those powers. They'd like to keep it alive; they'd like to reconstitute it and keep it going indefinitely as the way the world works.

Wouldn't you?

[Martian]

I will very carefully avoid any discussion of the actual politics involved with the G8/G20. however, I do have an article that serves as a counterpoint to roachboy's video, and feel as if I'd be remiss not to share it:

Anarchists leave trail of destruction - Canada - Canoe.ca

Full Article   click to show 

Anarchists leave trail of destruction
By QMI Agency staff

The streets of Toronto descended into anarchy Saturday as the city’s police chief warned of more mayhem on the last day of the G20 summit.

Hard-core, balaclava-wearing anarchists burned police cars, smashed and looted stores and threw bricks, bottles and bags filled with urine at police Saturday.

Two cruisers were set alight at King and Bay Sts. and another two cars went up in flames on Queen St. near Spadina Ave.

Violent protesters left a trail of shattered glass along Queen St. W. and then up Yonge St.

The stench of their vinegar-drenched clothes, soaked in a bid to ward off any teargas, followed the anarchy through the streets.

Police Chief Bill Blair said late Saturday as protesters continued to trash city streets that 130 people had been arrested and warned his officers would hunt down all the vandals.


He also confirmed that police used tear gas.

Mayor David Miller condemned the “criminals” who vandalized the city’s streets, expressing outrage at the way some protesters chose to make a political statement as world leaders met here for the G20 summit.

“We were concerned about people coming to Toronto to deliberately commit violent acts and I have no doubt whatsoever that this is what we are seeing. Torontonians should be angry about it,” Miller said.

“People who want to deliberately break windows and burn cars. This has nothing to do with protests.”

Torontonians watched with dismay as the kind of fiery violence that has plagued previous G8 summits played out on their own streets.

More than 30 people were arrested over the course of the day-long protest, which began peacefully at Queen’s Park.

But frustrated by an impenetrable line of security forces surrounding the downtown site where Prime Minister Stephen Harper was hosting the G20 summit, activists turned on the city.

Police let them get as far as Queen St. W. and then brought them to a halt.

Skirmishes broke out at several intersections as the officers were pelted with bottles of water, protest signs, urine and manure.

Protesters pulled rocks from gardens and bottles from recycling boxes to use as projectiles.

Some came armed for trouble with bats, hammers, and metal ball bearings.

The TTC shut down subway service on both the University and Yonge lines and told GO Transit to stop trains at the Danforth GO station.

Anarchists from the notorious Black Bloc left a trail of their trademark black clothing along Yonge St., shed to blend in with more peaceful protesters.

Starbucks, Swiss Chalet, American Apparel, Money Mart, all the major banks, TTC streetcars stalled by the protest, media vehicles, and the Zanzibar Tavern and its G-String Summit were all trashed.

Buildings and vehicles were tagged with graffiti ranging from anarchists’ symbols to slogans like, “F*** the rich” and “Kill cops.” Protester Lucy, 24, who wouldn’t give her last name said she was marching for no cause in particular.

“I’m glad Toronto had the balls to stand up and do something,” she said. “I haven’t seen Toronto like this before.” Her view wasn’t shared by many Torontonians.

Comedian Dave Regnier was walking up Yonge St. to eat dinner when people started running past to get away from protesters smashing glass.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said.

Toronto resident James, who wouldn’t give his last name, was riding his Vespa on Yonge St. when people fleeing the violence told him to get off the road. “This sickens me,” he said after surveying the damage up and down Toronto’s main street. “It’s crazy.”

The protests continued on throughout the afternoon, moving back to Queen’s Park Circle where pepper spray was used to subdue activists just a few hundred meters from the seat of Ontario government.

Later, a large crowd gathered outside the security fence at Bay and Front Sts. and the mayhem promised to go well into the night.

Hundreds of gawkers were drawn into the city by the demonstrations.

With camera phones in hand, they gathered behind police in riot gear and snapped pictures as the officers clashed with protesters at numerous intersections.

“I just came out to see what the fuss was all about and to see how crazy things would get,” said Matthew Marr, 19, a professional dancer who moved to Toronto six months ago from St. John, N.B.

The surreal scene included a moment when residents of an apartment above the standoff puts speakers out their window and blared Bob Marley’s One Love and other peace songs.

At the south end of the security fence, there was little sign of any discontent, aside from a patient Buddhist monk from Japan faithfully pounding a drum.

But about 100 Black Bloc anarchists in head-to-foot black, leading a core angry crowd of about 300 more protesters, failed to heed the messages of peace and soon were seen destroying store fronts and generally creating the kind of havoc they’re known for at G8 summits worldwide.

When the march bunched up at Queen St. W. and Spadina Ave., a call suddenly went out and the Black Bloc could be seen running north through the crowd until they found a police car which they promptly demolished.

Then they took off, breaking windows as they went, until they came across the two cruisers which they torched.

“They’re very organized — it’s almost like a cat-and-mouse game,” one observer said. “They are picking the few weakness they can find in the cops and targeting them and then quickly dispersing so they don’t get caught. They’re definitely the leaders.”

The number of protesters estimated at anywhere between 4,000 to 8,000 was down sharply from many previous summits.

In 2001, a G8 in Genoa, Italy, attracted an estimated 200,0000 protesters — one anti-globalization activist was shot dead by military police, more than 100 people were injured and the damage to the city was extensive.

The U of T’s Ella Kokotsis, director of external relations for the G8 and G20 Research Group, who has attended 15 summits, said this level of violence was not expected.

“I’m completely shocked to see what’s going on right now,” Kokotsis said. “I’m just surprised that it’s happening in Canada, to be quite frank with you, because it’s the kind of activity that we tend to see in Europe or we’re going to see in the United States but not necessarily here.

Kokotsis said 4,000 protesters is a much smaller number than have shown up at previous summits but “it doesn’t mean that they can’t wreak havoc.”

Legitimate protesters who work within the law, who attempt to get their voices heard through less controversial means, may feel that their concerns won’t be heard above the chaos.

“When this kind of thing happens, it just diverts the entire world’s attention to what’s going on in the streets, takes away from what G8 leaders have done ... it’s going to hijack the discussions, the press conferences, by the prime minister,” she said.

“But this is their aim; this is what these types of people do. The eyes of the world are on them so they’re going to do what they can in front of the cameras. And they know that those images are going to resonate around the world. It’s a real opportunity for them to make a statement.”

In the days leading up to the summit, city Councillor Kyle Rae told The Sun Toronto is getting all the pain and chain-link fences of international summitry and none of the spinoff benefits.

“The federal government didn’t ask us if we wanted to host this thing,” Rae said.

“Part of it is them visiting as much disruption and dislocation as they felt they could do. They don’t care for Toronto, Torontonians don’t vote for them and they have just reinforced that for the next election.”

Meanwhile, the G8 meetings in Huntsville earlier in the week brought buckets of federal cash for civic improvements and new facilities throughout the region.

The few protesters who made it to the town offered free hugs.

“Tony Clement isn’t a Toronto MP,” Rae said of the Parry Sound-Muskoka cabinet minister.

“It’s called pork-barrelling, isn’t it?”

I do not endorse or condone any actions taken by the police in opposition to the law or the right to peaceful protest; but at the same time here, let's not pretend it was all a bunch of peaceful hippies getting jackbooted by The Man. That's a bit disingenuous to say the least.

[Leto]

Most of the protest rallies were proceeding nicely until a group of professional (assholes) hooligans suddenly adopted black bloc tactics and started to run in a rampage. That music store in your video is, as Baraka_guru inferred, a Queen St landmark. It's across the street from the Horseshoe Tavern, a small intimate club where the Rolling Stones occasionally hold their trademark impromtu gigs.

I think you can see the scorch marks on the pavement under the store's sign from where the police car was set on fire by these goons the day before:

G20 ? Toronto 2010

The manager of Steve's Music on Queen West says he "absolutely" will apply for compensation from the federal government for damage to the store on Saturday.

Four big plate glass windows cracked and smashed from the heat of a police car set on fire right outside of the store just east of Spadina. The sign on the 33-year-old Queen West landmark is charred and some of the plastic letters are melted.

Gerry Markman says it'll cost $2,577 to replace the shattered glass.

"At the begining, it was all peaceful stuff," says sales floor manager Nigel Roopnarine, who was in the store with customers. Around 4 p.m. Saturday, a group showed up carrying a black flag with red lettering and the mood changed, he recalls. Saturday manager Kevin Parker bolted the door, even though people from the street were trying to get in.

A shirtless man in dreadlocks tried to climb the Steve's sign and nearly fell. Inside, they watched people in black throw "mini bowling balls" at police, then the car was set on fire. "It was very scary," says Roopnarine.

Steve's staff snuck the customers out to the back alley. Employees eventually got out when they managed to get to their cars in the back and drive down Peter St.

Ninety per cent of the protesters were peaceful, Roopnarine said. About Sunday night's four-hour standoff between police and people in the intersection of Queen and Spadina, he says, "It's upsetting what happened on Saturday, but I can see police wouldn't know who's who."

[Baraka_Guru]

Well, my opinion of anarchists is in about the same category as my opinion of libertarians.

It's mainly because I can't quite understand what they hope to achieve, because the logical conclusion of their respective philosophies are either unsustainable or practically unachievable. Either way, they're undesirable....that is if you are socially minded....you know, like most human beings.

[Jetée]

Originally Posted by Leto

yes, well, the excuse is the cost of security. I heard that the G8/G20 in Toronto is using roughly 5 times the number of police as Pittsburgh did for the G20. So, the extra cost for this summit should be roughly 5x the Pittsburgh cost which equals 90 million. So, where is the extra 1.2 billion going to?

Towards this, of course:


Riot police on horseback move through the streets of downtown Toronto in the midst of protests against the G20 summit in Toronto, June 26, 2010. --(Mark Blinch/REUTERS)


To be serious, though, Pittsburgh, for all intents and purposes is a tiny city. I think it has less than three-and-half thousand people within its city limits, and those limits, again, are significantly smaller when compared to such metropolitan hubs as New York, Paris, London, and especially Toronto (given we are in the present talking about the summit, as was held in Toronto).

Toronto is the largest city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. With over 2.5 million residents, it is the fifth most populous municipality in North America. Toronto is at the heart of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and is part of a densely populated region in Southern Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe, which is home to over 8.1 million residents—approximately 25% of Canada's population.

My point here being is that the additional expenses that were said to have gone towards security measures, planning and preparation, well, I can entirely (well, perhaps almost) believe they spent it all on enforcement detail. Given the facts that if we are just going on manpower here - to aid in crowd control - then that would lead the layman to theorize that an increase of 7-8 times the numbe of law enforcement/authorities would be mandatory, drawing upon the example from the most recent meeting, of which the expenditure that was ordered saw it fully necessary for the G20 summit held last November in Pittsburgh.

Additionally, this summit, although "officially" held over the weekend through a period of two days, from 26-27, seemed to draw out a lot longer than the one that preceded it. I don't know what it is, but this weekend's news of the G8/G20 summit (are there two separate meetings? that mgith already mean double the security personnel needed right there) seemed to start on the 24-25, and just capitulated sometime last night. The actual process of discussion among nations might have only been brief over a period of two days, but the presence of protesters, supporters, campaigners and regular citizens walking throughout the streets of Toronto was a week-long process.

[Leto]

Aren't those horses beautiful???!!! Okay, that makes it all worth it.

But to answer one of your questions Jetee, there were two distinct meetings. And yes, the cost is the cost of covering off the security & infrastructure to hold both of them.

The G8 meeting was held in the Muskoka town of Huntsville, about 2.5 hours north of Toronto in classic cottage country. That was from about Thursday night, and all day Friday.

The G20 was held in the city proper, at the Toronto Convention Centre, right downtown. This was done on the Saturday and Sunday (26 & 27th). The security actually included a 4 km long fence that was erected and bisected or separated the convention area from the rest of the city. The police's mandate was to prevent any compromise of this fence. A similar fence was erected in Muskoka for the G8.

I heard that there were tanks positioned at the airport. So there was definitely more than police on the ground in Toronto.

Incidentally, this is the first time that both meetings were held at the same time and place so that may have an impact on cost as well.

[Manic_Skafe]

I'm not so much interested in the underlying politics or supposed meaning of all this stuff but much more so in the spectacle of it all. Interesting article, first-hand account and more photos here.

[Jetée]

Originally Posted by Manic_Skafe

[img]

I'm not so much interested in the underlying politics or supposed meaning of all this stuff but much more so in the spectacle of it all. Interesting article, first-hand account and more photos here.

I thought this season's summit was, indeed, more of a spectacle than a few of those previously held, (not as much of a spectacle, though, as that UN Climate Summit held in Copenhagen in the past year) and while the volativity was there, it was perhaps more ballyhooed than what actually came to occur.

I never understand why organize all these protests just when these summits occur, and in the locations themselves; that's just lazy attenion-grabbing. Protest every-single day to your community leaders, not to world politicians of which can do nothing to aid your cause. I don't understand the politics of a "good" protest.

That aside, the reason I initially set forth this reply is because I was also much more interested in seeing what became of the street actions and protesters, and forgot to mention that in my previous post, the image was courtesy of Boston's long-running photo-journalistic gallery, 'The Big Picture'.

I've even gone to some lengths to feature a few of the more telling captures from said gallery, as can be found HERE.

Lastly, I don't know what else there is to talk about here other than the spectacle of the street-clash-authority personalities, and maybe some world leaders spotting, because as far as I can go to assume, I do not believe any one of us were privileged enough to sit in on those summit meetings, to gauge the measure of our world economies, and see what measures are most fitting to react to them. I'm not sure how I meant that to seem, but maybe all I'm asking is, why are these meetings not held in secret, or at least tele-conferenced? What's the point of riling up the masses, just to leave them in the dark (about your plans for global domination redistrubition of economic funds towards an ideal stasis of commerce and consumership)?

It's all too much of a media circus, increasing each and every time, and I, for one, do not see the point of it at all.