Recent events suggest the G-20 may not matter at all, especially as it faces the first real test of its power.

It would be wrong for citizens and investors to be confident that the G-20 governments will deliver their promises to reverse the monetary expansion and fiscal expansion, to do it at the right time, and to do it in a coordinated way.

Global financial markets want an immediate, bold, and coordinated policy response. G-20 members did not provide it.

International Monetary Fund executive board member Arrigo Sadun and AEI economists Desmond Lachman, Philip I. Levy, and John H. Makin will analyze competing national goals and the future of the G-20. AEI's Claude Barfield will moderate.

The Group of Twenty (G-20) asked the Financial Stability Board (FSB) to devise a process for identifying Globally Systemic International Banks (G-SIB).  In July the FSB released a consultative document setting forth the methodology for identifying G-SIBs and in November produced its first list using this methodology.

Europe’s proposed financial firewall around Spain and Italy will prove any more effective in protecting those countries from another market onslaught than was the Maginot line in protecting France. The very design of the proposed firewall appears to be basically flawed in dealing with a renewed loss of market confidence in the euro’s long-run sustainability.

As President Obama prepares to meet other G-20 leaders in Cannes later this week, he previewed his pitch with an op-ed in the Financial Times. It read a bit like a half-time locker room pep talk to a team that had gotten knocked around on the field.

The Greek tragedy is far from over as the debate over whether to accept debt-forgiveness conditions upended the government in Athens. Furthermore, other debt-laden European nations risk going under.