Euro Crisis Hijacks G-20 Summit’s Agenda
If anyone can afford to strut on the beaches of the Côte d’Azur during the meeting on Thursday and Friday, it should be the fast-growing developing countries, especially China, but also India, Russia and Brazil. The balance of power has shifted so rapidly that Europe is now asking them for money, and they are in a stronger position to push their views on trade rules and other issues. But the leaders of the big emerging economic powers of the world are not likely to be crowing. Not only do they face vulnerabilities of their own, like worrisome levels of inflation in China, but they also do not want to see their best customers struggle economically, especially when another crucial <a href="http://hospital.99mr.com/zhongqingnisiyiliaomeiron"><strong>重庆医疗美 容</strong></a> outlet for their exports — the United States — is also suffering. “China is going to be in a pretty good position,” said Uri Dadush, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “But don’t interpret that to mean that China is happy with all this. China is part of the world economy.” That was the sentiment that President Hu Jintao of China expressed in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro this week. “China sincerely wishes to see stability in the euro zone and the euro,” he said. Typically, Group of 20 summit meetings are an occasion for the host leader to appear statesmanlike and push pet issues. Mr. Sarkozy had originally intended the Cannes meeting to focus on his call for changes to the international monetary system, in a bid to reduce exchange rate fluctuations and give the euro and other currencies more status compared with the dollar. In character for the frenetic French president, the agenda also contains an ambitious list of other goals, including changing bank regulation, as well as dealing with unemployment, corruption, tax evasion, food security and global warming. Mr. Sarkozy’s schedule even includes a meeting on Thursday morning with Bill Gates of Microsoft to discuss development financing. There will undoubtedly be pronouncements on many of these issues. Most of the work on such questions is done in advance by lower-level officials. The summit meeting, which begins with a working lunch Thursday, is to a large extent a photo opportunity at which leaders issue communiqués that were agreed upon well ahead of time. But events this week have forced Mr. Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, <a href="http://hospital.99mr.com/baodingxiandainvziyiyuan/"><strong>保定现代</strong></a> the chancellor of Germany, to become mired in Greek politics when they would rather that their constituencies see them appearing on the global stage with President Obama or Mr. Hu. Mr. Sarkozy and Mrs. Merkel met in an emergency session Wednesday afternoon with the heads of European Union institutions and the International Monetary Fund to discuss the Greek situation. In the evening, they met with President George A. Papandreou of Greece, who had declared Tuesday that he <a href="http://hospital.99mr.com/hunancaojiazhengxingmeiro"><strong>曹家整形美 容</strong></a> would let his people decide in a referendum whether they supported his tough-minded, often painful efforts to keep Greece afloat. The proposal, which could lead to Greece’s withdrawal from the euro zone, upset financial markets and undermined the latest European rescue plan. With the Greek government struggling to stay in power, it is not clear what answers Mr. Papandreou can offer before the referendum, even if he survives a confidence vote in Parliament scheduled for Friday night. He pledged to hold the referendum by Dec. 4 or 5. Officials said that until Greece’s commitment to the plan to fix its budget overruns is clear again, the country is unlikely to receive an 8 billion euro (11 billion) aid installment, due this month, which is needed before the end of the year to pay bills and salaries. A spokesman for the German finance ministry said Greece apparently has enough money to keep running until mid-December, when it has to redeem more than 6 billion euros in debt. Meanwhile, the relentless flow of negative economic news continued. A survey of managers in manufacturing, published Wednesday, pointed to a decline in European output during the last three months of 2011. The biggest drop in sentiment came in Italy, further heightening fears that a combination of slow growth and political paralysis could make it impossible for that country to continue to service its debt. While markets recovered some of the ground they lost earlier in the week, investors’ <a href="http://inbookmark.com/mybookmark.php"><strong>重整形美容</strong></a> unease was apparent when the European Financial Stability Facility pulled back from a planned 3 billion euro deal to issue 10-year bonds to help finance Ireland’s bailout because of a lack of buyers. As part of the overall European effort to maintain stability in the euro zone, the facility is to be enlarged from 440 billion euros to 1 trillion euros and provide “risk insurance” to new bonds issued by struggling euro zone countries.
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