(11/28/2015) Calls for International coordination of macroeconomic policy are back, after a 30-year hiatus. To some it looks anomalous that the Fed is about to raise interest rates at a time when most major central banks see a need to extend further monetary stimulus.
Korea may have an opportunity to exercise historic leadership, when it chairs the G-20 meeting in Seoul, November 11-12. This will be the first time that a non-G-7 country has hosted the G-20 since the larger, more inclusive, group supplanted the smaller rich-country group in April of last year as the premier steering committee for the world economy. With large emerging market and developing countries playing such expanded economic roles, the G-7 had lost legitimacy. It was high time to make the membership more representative. But there is also a danger that the G-20 will now prove too unwieldy, in which case decision-making might then revert to the smaller group.