hello again and welcome to spotlight the interview show on r.t. algernon of and today my guest in the studio is john kerry. heads of state and the biggest names of the political and financial world have gathered in seoul this week for another g. twenty summit they're discussing the possible ways of overcoming the global economic imbalance which actually is blamed for the recent financial crisis the g twenty probably has the weightiest opinion on this matter which is confirmed by john keratin the founder and director of the g. twenty and the g eight research groups. the g twenty was born just two years ago was an attempt to bring together the financial elite of the leading economics a was to brainstorm ideas on how to overcome the financial crisis the poor has quickly gave good value today the participants will try to come up with

a decision on global balance the budget economies are blaming the developed countries for this saying exorbitant appetites for cash make the balance even bigger now the g twenty has to go forward and make some difficult decisions. close the curtain and welcome to the show great to be here thank you very much for coming in again well this year the biggest the biggest issue of the global economy has been the danger of the so-called currency war as we've discussed it in the studio already now i want your opinion do you think that the g. twenty is the best venue to try to settle the looming economic oh very much so because there's nowhere else to do it a few years ago in two thousand and six there was an effort at the international monetary fund to do it but too many members too many rules and of

course not real leaders there to take ownership of it so it's a good thing that the achieve twenty. the summit has taken it up we've seen just a few weeks ago when g twenty four finance ministers met that there was a major move forward to try and produce a multilateral solution to what looked like a unilateral cycle of retaliation but now it'll be up to the leaders at work already to take the next step to move from a general political agreement to start working towards specific guidelines about what indicators what numbers will be allowed in the interests of all well the g twenty members they are not equal well for example the

biggest plays of course are of the club china and the united states do they set any guiding principles can they dictate or. or what well on the whole there is as democratic as it looks as if i mean that you twenty know some countries are inevitably more important and others for different reasons but the basic bargain that was recognised back in one thousand nine hundred nine when the g twenty was formed at the finance ministers' level is that all of these countries are systemically significant that's a criteria so you can be systemically significant by being a producer of financial security or by being a consumer if you go down say argentina you can take all of your neighbors down so you have to be in the club to agree to the rules so there's no a hole in the dike no we call it link and of course the

a bigger countries that can watch the smaller ones to make sure that they're moving in the right direction but even without of course what we've seen on. some of the tough issues the g twenty has moved ahead with reform of the international monetary fund. at the pittsburgh some of the g twenty finance ministers a few weeks ago it was a smaller group that got together to crack the deal and in both cases of course some russia was in that smaller group or a. mid november france takes over as the chair would you say no other the driver's seat at the g seven and that it has made the reforming the international monetary system the focus of this year long presidency well according to your opinion according to your information are according to your feelings how many countries among the claim that they have and i'm one of the twenty i'm going

to support mr sarkozy's program are going forward i think a significant number of significant is it a majority think a majority in the end it depends on what we mean by this grandiose term and i suspect what we're going to end up with is far less ambitious than nicolas sarkozy in his very french wales likes to present but we've already seen a broad recognition that the old way of doing things since one nine hundred forty five when the us dollar was the old only pillar that's not good enough anymore what we saw at the second g twenty summit in london in april two thousand and nine was the g. twenty basically saying yes to an idea from china the central bank governor saying we had to move towards a more pooled form of reserve currency in

a limited way the special drawing rights at the international monetary fund yes only for a currencies a lie behind it but in the coming in. years through will be more of them for a greater reliance on ours and as we see the internationalization of the greater a use in the region of the chinese renminbi its currency it's growing as an international currency and certainly we've seen from the russian federation an argument that the rich should be a regional reserve currency with the ruble playing its full part and if you look ahead to another part of the french agenda is commodity prices right commodity prices are probably going to matter more we're already saying commodity markets soaring oil gas gold in so many other things so

those countries such as the russian federation which have those real resources backing their currency i think can look forward to the day we're appropriately their currency will have a greater part in the international monetary system is a halt that may look like a good thing status prestige but with that of course comes special responsibilities which i'm sure the russian federation will be willing to bear their joint you just mentioned sarkozy doing something and in this very french way every time i hear somebody say that were i here for example an englishman saying well well for example a baton is going to do that it is very a marriage and a way i always have wondered what's the kind of taisha there's a positive rather than negative well anyway is there still a division into those two camps in the g twenty to be serious one represented by

france while control of the one fighting and the other is more more conservative but liberal like the united states has prevailing today and that's why. of the divisions certainly in the g twenty but there's enough diversity in the g twenty that there's a larger array divisions but you're right there are a few countries in the g twenty who are attached to the anglo american model of capitalism led by the it added states and britain above all and they were the ones with the british it's a certain extent by the way well this sympathetic i mean to this financial you guys used to be at the i used to be this financial crisis affects we're all still suffering from it was really born and bred in the usa in the mortgage market. in new york but also in britain northern rock was the first bank to go down on the

european continent there's a greater faith in the role of the state harder top down regulation of the financial system every day we live this duality in canada because we're both an english and a francophone country and fortunately. we did things well enough that none of the canadian banks had a problem during the crisis and as a result canada is leading the group of seven in the growth coming into their recovery but beyond the transatlantic difference if you will even. china. saudi arabia i mean with very heavy state honed and state controlled financial systems far more than what is the norm in france so what are the great to

challenges but strengths of the g twenty is how the leaders can learn about the greater diversity in the world well speaking of diversity should this. city b. b. b. preserves and judy should one of these positions start winning or do you think that the truth is somewhere in the middle and we should have different opinions and and this clash of opinions just because it's our there has to be difference of opinion at the beginning not only because it's inevitable law but because these leaders the consensus of the impossible only twenty countries i mean this is the topiary all of the leaders need to learn from each other and you can see that happening at each of these twenty summit but because there's twenty there can be unusual coalitions that form let me take just one example of from the g. twenty should we slap

a new levy on our big bank city dishing to all of the other taxes the continental europeans in this case think it's a terrific idea so did the british so you had team europe often supported by the united states if that debate were discussed in the old she seven well the only country that was against it then that thought it was a bad idea was canada but it's been dealt with in the g twenty and every other member of the g. twenty out side of the chief seven agrees with canada including the russian federation that's a really bad idea so that new coalition canada and russia by the only ones from within the g eight together with all of the rest from the g twenty we've won that debate so there's a consensus and it's done the right way says john kerry and the founder and director of the g. twenty and the g. eight research groups spotlight will be back shortly right after the break will

continue their sense of you so stay with us. a moment when the world has changed forever. thousands passed to nothingness. the solomons wounded.

to suffer to end. it was the first but probably not the last military uses of this weapon. many more will be come. children a common get on in the future. welcome back to the spotlight i'm going of in just a reminder that my guest in the studio here today is john kiran the founder and director of the g. twenty and g. eight research groups. well i had mr alex sargent here in the studio a while ago we were talking about these possible currency wars financial wars and

he said that well i almost quote i almost got that that this finance ministers meeting in a club or the g twenty pledged to refrain from damaging competitive currency devaluations but they can refrain from that well maybe for a week maybe for a couple of weeks no more do you agree is that true or is it is that the price of those of those. i mean taunts and decisions taken well i here's we could stop and they're still refraining so whether they can move beyond two or three weeks we don't know but so far so good and i think it will go on for a much longer time because many of the countries that were engaging in practices that their neighbors their partners or didn't like have really seen that they could be moving too close to the brink that everybody would be much worse off if they

didn't stop so what they did a couple of weeks ago at the finance ministers' meeting which they found i think a sensible solution that look other currencies themselves are just one small of highly visible part of a broader problem it's the current account imbalances that lie underneath so let's look at the cause of the problem and come to an agreement about when imbalances are too big what kind of and by. says are too big and see if we can come up with indicative guidelines rules of the road so that if one country gets too far out of line to be a discussion everybody else sit down and say look how can all of us help not just one country it's your problem solve it all on your own a chorus imbalances have two sides one country exports too much because the other

country imports too much so it's both the debtors and the creditors that have two. together and i think what we're going to see here at the summit is the next step forward and more specific guidelines as to what that market lateral regime will be well what what i was actually driving at when i was quoting mr erlich session is as a matter of fact the former russian deputy finance minister former russian sent in a central back had been the central bank is that of the decisions taking at least some taken at the summits g. need twenty g. eight they are maybe implemented maybe not but the money spent on these summits themselves are pretty great and this year's summits of the both g eight and g twenty in toronto caused much criticism in the world over the amount of

cash spent on them spotlights me they will tell us more and that. it was this fake leak which came to symbolize extravagant spending on preparation for the g. eight in g. twenty summit lake was sit down in the press room but instead of being impressed journalists were by the extravagance take you into that most of the clinic was the real one in one of the world's biggest ontario would cause didn't tough criticism just one billion dollars in. security they learned greatly exceeded figures few previous summits. the fact lead to violent protests in toronto who took the g eight and g twenty this critical situation as an incredible waste of money. this summits were to cover the issue of getting government spending under control most of the speakers suggested the world leaders had plenty of other opportunities

to meet and the christless summit monotonous a series. that is a downside to what we just heard from our reporter can you name a particular measure which has been implemented. after a decision taken at g twenty summit one that had a positive effect globally you shoot on the whole the g twenty leaders to keep the promises the commitments they make at the summit here quite as well they prefer not to make real commitment well sometimes they do make a very big ones the very first summit in washington they all agreed similar taney asli to engage in very large scale fiscal stimulus and virtually all of them did an unprecedented amount at the london summit the second one they agreed

to together produced over a trillion dollars in additional stimulus targeted towards the poor countries in the poor people and on the whole that money was delivered at the trot osama. yet had the big job of controlling the euro crisis that was catalyzed by greece and the way they get out was coming up with a message of yes will stimulus now stimulate now because the recovery is still fragile but will exit soon in two thousand and eleven and then we'll can. troll our budget deficit and accumulated debts by two thousand and thirteen two thousand and sixteen that might not seem like a big problem in the russian federation which doesn't have bad government deficits and debts but boy in many european countries it was a very big problem what we've seen is since toronto people are keeping that

commitment sarkozy of france despite all of those riots and protests in france the other week david cameron in britain cutting his budget to a degree a larger than any other british government since the second world war causing real pain to his people leaders willing to run the risk of unpopularity to keep that sunlight commitment short term pain for a longer term gain but they know that they really all have to do a do it because if they don't other countries will defect and everybody inside the g twenty and without will soon be much worse off so our agreements like that. several trillion dollars in fiscal stimulus over one trillion dollars out london are they worth the fifty seven thousand dollars for the fake lay and jack chile

showed the people of the world what lakes in canada and russia are really like well well well you know i think if we are asked that pretty much the british people that sounds great i think i think they would they they would say that those a long short term pain is not much better than the official fake lake whatever ok you know. this is the g twenty have you just mentioned that that that the presidents and the prime. ministers started working in the interests of a community. of the club now but do you have a mechanism that would would stop individual countries from pursuing national economic solutions this regarding the global economic interests there's a lot of them in the first instance through the

a mutual assessment process each of the g twenty leaders are going to have to look each other in the eye get advice from the international monetary fund about what their specific countries should be doing to make everybody better off and everybody is not just the g twenty members but because those twenty are so important to the global economy as a whole it's for everyone in the world the south korean host has done an important job on the road to the soul summit of an extensive reach program consulting regularly with the united nations with countries around the world and then actually inviting to the summit. the leaders of regional organizations in africa the poorest region of the world the association of southeast asian nations singapore as the head of a three g.

group of twenty seven smaller states and then of course you'll have the ban ki-moon the secretary general of the united nations bob zelic head of the world bank there at the summit sitting down with the leaders making sure that the voices of the poor in the world outside the g twenty are heard loud and clear. today when the g. twenty is is becoming a household name from politics and economic decisions this it mean that the g eight is actually dying is the touche and oh no no. what we saw there i know you the father of both says that that would make you sad of course if well done really it means twice as much work for us in the g. eight research group in the g twenty if you got lost struggling to keep them both alive again well i think what we saw a few months ago when both summits were held together g eight muskoka g twenty in toronto you could compare which one was working better than the other were neither

working could they work together and yet so was overwhelmingly yes both could work well together so up at muskoka of the g eight they raised in the teeth of the worst recession when governments felt they had big deficits they mobilized an additional seven point three billion dollars for maternal and children's health to save the lives of thirty. million mothers and babies that are needed over the next five years and the u.n. back in september built on that foundation with another forty billion dollars or so meanwhile down at toronto they really did stop the euro crisis and we just have to reflect if we had another big financial crisis as we did in the

autumn of two thousand and eight that first one was solved by government spending as i mentioned but this time there were no governments with spare money to spend so it had to be solved a different way and trying to get the job thank you thank you john that was a great interview really i enjoyed it and just a reminder that my guest in the studio today was john kerry and the founder and director of the g. twenty and the g. eight research group to see that's it for now from all of us here will be back with more first on comments on what's going on in and outside russia on. well then stay on r.t. and take it. to reflect. in

india she's available in hotels. remote have been turned down. something.

called a full seasons hotel the sultan hotel. the world's richest nations with questions hanging over. money. shared growth beyond the crisis. here in seoul where the g twenty has kicked off join me now wait for the latest. russian agents caught in the u.s. this summer. it claims. britain

joined. the hike in university fees. how we have more analysis of the business. better access to capital for small and medium sized businesses. well a very warm welcome to you this is our t. live from the center of moscow that she twenty leaders are in south korea all trying to get their countries back into a good financial health but each keeping an eye on the currency war that threatens to overshadow the summit the heads of the.