Looking beyond the global economic summit.(Inside Track)

According to news reports, the much-ballyhooed November 15 international economic summit in Washington accomplished little aside from agreement on various vague goals by the delegations from 21 nations and four international organizations. There were no flashy resolutions and no dramatic makeover of the global financial system--yet. One item of universal agreement was the need for additional summits, the next to be held in late March or early April, to continue negotiations on a new blueprint for international finance.

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The Washington summit, with its heads of state and other national and international dignitaries, may have attracted all the media attention, but the real action, for anyone who was paying close attention, was at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations on November 14, when British Prime Minister Gordon Brown addressed a special session chaired by former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin on the topic of the financial crisis. Brown has been shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic and among the countries of continental Europe over the past few weeks, lobbying for an ambitious new plan ...