G-8 summit largely ignores economic woes

With the Group of 8 having wrapped up its summit Wednesday, it won't be long before workers take apart the large eco-building constructed here with recyclable material for the hordes of journalists covering the annual session. Soon it will be as if the building never existed.

Many may feel the same way about this year's G-8 meeting.

President Bush and leaders of seven of the other wealthiest nations face a triple whammy of economic woes: a global credit crunch, soaring food prices and spiraling oil costs.

But in three days of tackling a range of other issues -- among them global warming, aid to Africa and Zimbabwe's election violence -- there was little in the way of fresh initiatives on how to get the world's economy back on track.

"I'm not sure what economic benefits will be gained from" the summit, said Melanie Bowler of Moody's Economy.com in London.

Like many economists, she looks at G-8 summits more as a "meeting place of the minds" than as a gathering where concrete steps are necessarily taken. Still, after reading the G-8's declaration on the world economy, which expressed confidence in long-term growth, she was struck by the fact that it barely referred to the credit crunch and didn't even mention the U.S. dollar, which many see as an important factor in the global economic woes.

The largest visible accomplishment at this year's G-8 was the group's agreement on halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, including first-time support from Bush for a long-term target for combating global warming. Yet they didn't get heads of major developing countries such as China and India to buy into it, leaving the hard negotiating for later.

Before leaving the plush and heavily secured mountaintop resort where the G-8 leaders met for three days, Bush declared that the agreement represented "significant progress," although environmental groups sharply disagreed.

Some observers said that at the least, the G-8's action would help propel efforts toward an international treaty on reducing carbon gases, which certainly would have huge repercussions for the global economy. But that won't give any near-term relief to people around the world struggling with inflation, rising joblessness and declining wealth from sagging stock markets.

The G-8 consists of the Group of 7 leading industrialized nations and Russia. Though the G-8's influence has waned as economic fortunes have shifted east, its members -- the U.S., Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia -- still account for about 60% of the world's economy.