The G20's bubble and squeak initiatives

The initiatives announced by the G20 were nothing more than repackaged, old or already-agreed measures presented to the world as new ideas.

It's "easy to be cynical" about the G20, says Jeremy Warner in The Independent. New Labour has an irritating habit of repackaging old or already-agreed initiatives and presenting them as new, and this was no exception. The $5trn fiscal stimulus was achieved by pooling together every conceivable global stimulus measure; the 'new' $1.1trn is "largely a regurgitation of pre-agreed measures", including finance for the IMF which was bumped up from the expected $500bn to $750bn.

Even so, the summit marked a "breakthrough moment" in rebuilding the world's confidence: stockmarkets soared across the globe. The degree of consensus achieved on regulatory reform was impressive, tax havens and banking secrecy have been consigned to history, and the degree of unity may "presage international cooperation and policy coordination across a much wider range of issues".

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.