Stephanomics

Important talks

• Stephanie Flanders
• 3 Mar 09, 05:13 PM GMT

The prime minister will be pushing his vision of a "global new deal" at the White House today. One thing we can say for sure: he's given the G20 Summit a lot more thought than the president.

That's no reflection on Mr Obama. He has quite a lot else to do these days, and unlike Gordon Brown, he hasn't spent a large chunk of his life thinking about, say, the finer workings of the World Bank.

Usually the US president would be able to count on his Treasury Department to do his international economic thinking for him. But it is what you might call short-staffed. The two senior international posts in the department haven't been filled yet, and there's no-one on the immediate horizon.

The upshot is that many of the key summit negotiations are having to be handled by the Treasury secretary himself.

Tim Geithner is no slouch when it comes to the ins and outs of the international financial system. Among other things, he used to run part of the IMF. But he also has quite a lot on his plate (today it was launching a new $1tr lending facility with the Fed).

The same applies to Larry Summers, the president's key economic advisor, who will also be in part of today's meeting and knows the territory well.

It all makes today's meetings with the president and senior officials a lot more important than they would usually be. The British officials need to get the Americans to focus now, because they know they may not get a better chance.

PS In the next few weeks you're going to hear and read plenty about the issues facing the London Summiteers. I've just written an article for the BBC's special G20 site on one key issue that's taking up a lot of the sherpas' time: beefing up the IMF. You can read it here.

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