As world leaders have gathered in Asia for the Group of 20 (G-20) summit to discuss measures to revitalize the frail global economy, tensions have risen over struggling currencies and trade. Likewise, President Obama and other world leaders in Seoul, South Korea for the two-day summit are having to contend with one another's opposing strategies for fostering a more stable economic environment and preventing a looming financial meltdown.
The first G-20 leaders’ summit took place two years ago and has since witnessed the growth of nations like China and India. Fox News explains that the aim of this year’s summit “is to craft a new global economic order to replace one powered by the U.S. running huge trade deficits while countries like China, Germany and Japan accumulate vast surpluses.”
While much was disputed during the summit, several agreements were made, including one that involves increasing supervision of financial institutions, and another that entails providing greater financial support to developing countries by way of the International Monetary Fund — an organization in which the United States is a 17-percent shareholder, making the U.S. the largest IMF shareholder in the world. In other words, the U.S. bears a larger financial burden than any other nation in the world, in some cases more than triple that of other nations.
Likewise, the decision to place more financial control in the hands of the IMF legitimizes concerns posed by The New American in the past few years that “the global elites driving the G8/G20 agenda have been aiming at transforming the IMF into a global equivalent of the Federal Reserve.”
