Sarkozy says it all

... about the futility of this G20 Summit. We were told this summit would herald the beginning of a new financial model for the 21st century, Bretton Woods stylee.

What is becoming clearer is that our leaders at home and abroad have neither the vision or inclination to bring about the sort of collaborative action we've had promised by serial delusional Gordon Brown.

Now President Sarkozy has threatened a walk-out if his demands for better global financial regulation - namely by having a single global financial regulator - are not met. Gordon Brown, for once, just once in his miserable life, is actually right in calling Sarkozy's demand "ridiculous".

I wager Sarkozy's threat has far more to do with French domestic politics than anything else. The Europeans are blaming us and the Americans for what's happening. Sarkozy is hoping his "tough stand" against the big bad "Anglo-Saxons" (love that one) at our own summit in London will commend him to the French public, as he is currently not too popular.

Gordon Brown, on the other hand, is trying to get his head up Obama's ass in the hope it might make him more popular. Angela Merkel is calling for less hasty stimuli and unthought-through tax cuts, and more prudence, because it is what her electorate are demanding.

Right now, the social unrest this crisis has spawned is only just beginning. Priority number one for every single world leader is going to be their image at the summit to the folks back home. The priority is trying to keep their jobs in their own countries. As Sarkozy has shown, national interests are going to come first.

This means that Gordon's vision for "co-ordinated global action" is little more than a fantasy, like so many of his visions. We are not going to be seeing the establishment of a new global financial regulatory system, nor the wholesale worldwide adoption of US/UK fiscal stimulus policies (mainly because said policies are economically insane, and I think most countries realise that). Both of these probabilities are outstandingly good news. But what a waste of time and money the summit is going to be. What's it really going to be used for, other than an excuse for early domestic electioneering?

Here's what they should agree to at the G20 Summit.

• Raising interest rates.
• Tax cuts
• No more bailouts, and the withdrawal of funds currently being used to bail out failed companies
• Ban quantitative easing
• An acceptance that the economy needs to correct itself, rather than having its distortions entrenched and exacerbated
• And really having a long hard think about the Fractional Reserve Banking system, and the great, excessive power exercised by central banks.