Both the FT and IHT are carrying stories about how the Group of Seven has been acting in a more pacific fashion towards China over the weekend. According to the Financial Times:
Aides at the G7 finance ministers meeting in Rome said the US and the UK in particular pushed for the group to take a more conciliatory approach towards Beijing ahead of a broader G20 summit in London on April 2.
“The G7 has realised that China needs to be brought into the fold of the global financial system rather than be treated as a pariah just because of currency inflexibility,” UBS said in a note on Sunday on the meeting. “This is also a realisation that as the world’s largest foreign exchange reserve holder and the US’s largest creditor nation, China not only holds the purse strings but its continued growth is crucial to helping the world recover from the economic crisis.”
The London Summit is shaping up to be utterly fascinating, to say nothing of potentially of great historic significance. But in other G7 news, the Japanese seem to have been driven to drink. Figures.
