Financial Summitry

The G-20 Summit to Save the World and Reinvent Finance produced a surprisingly meaty declaration and action plan.  At least one specific mention of bankruptcy: 

* National and regional authorities should review resolution regimes and bankruptcy laws in light of recent experience to ensure that they permit an orderly wind-down of large complex cross-border financial institutions. *

In general, the most interesting parts deal with regulatory reform.   

Between now and the end of March, we could see important agenda-setting work on accounting, credit derivatives, capital, liquidity and regulation of financial conglomerates.  Regulatory harmonization and coordination are getting a massive boost.  The IMF may get a new lease on life.  Unsaid, the G-20 is ascending rapidly as the preeminent international forum for economic policy coordination.  This is key for crisis management, but also for reform going forward.  UPDATE:  As an aside, I am a bit puzzled at the negativity from all the luminaries in today's New York Times.  Considering transition timing, the size and diversity of the forum (G-20 vs G-7), the unreally short preparation fuse, and the huge, long-held disagreements among the participants, one might have expected a page of platitudes.  Now that would have been embarrassing.  Instead, I am impressed by the sheer number and specificity of regulatory items up for negotiation between now and March (even "private pools of capital" get a mention, albeit with a reprieve).  Did the Bretton Woods rhetoric cloud expectations?  Sometimes it is good to be a pessimist ...