Translated material
Capital kills
The summit of leaders of the leading countries of the world was accompanied by broken windows
If it's possible to waste $1 billion on security for a major international event, Stephen Harper's government has done it. The unprecedented amount gave rise to another reason for protests, which the Canadian authorities were unable to prevent anyway (and would not have been able to). But the wise decision to close numerous institutions, effectively declaring days off, brought an extra few thousand curious citizens onto the streets of Toronto. Participants at the G8 and G20 summits, despite the appropriate compliments to the hosts regarding the organization of work, also felt inconvenience. And all this against the background of a rather sluggish content of both summits.Canada, as you know, combined summits in time, but not in place: the G8 met on Friday and Saturday at the Deerhurst resort complex in the Muskoka region, almost two hundred kilometers from Toronto, and the G20 met yesterday in Toronto itself . The G8 adopted the “Muskoka Declaration: Exit from the Crisis and New Beginnings,” in which not a word is devoted to the exit from the crisis of the G8 countries themselves - it was only noted that this process is “acquiring an increasingly sustainable character.” But “new beginnings” is a specific theme of the Canadian chairmanship of the club. Stephen Harper's government has proposed the Maternal, Newborn and Under-Five Health Initiative. The document notes that no new special financial mechanisms will be created, but the G8 countries, in addition to existing programs, will mobilize another $5 billion in the next five years and count on increased funding from other countries and charitable organizations (in particular, the Fund Bill and Melinda Gates).
As for the economy, the leaders of the G8, and even more so the G20, seem increasingly inclined to agree with the slogans of the anti-globalists that capital kills. Perhaps that is why the protests become more modest with each new international summit. This time, protest activity was at its maximum on Saturday, when the G8 leaders joined their G20 colleagues in Toronto.
The police blocked several blocks with a metal fence, inside which were the convention center, the Fairmont Hotel (Dmitry Medvedev and some other leaders stayed there), other hotels, banks and institutions. A “free speech zone” was organized along the entire security perimeter - traffic was completely excluded there, but demonstrations were allowed. Of course, not all the summit delegates and the press were able to stay inside the perimeter, and some unlucky tourists, on the contrary, stayed in hotels in this “ghetto”. It has proven to be an almost impossible task for the police to ensure smooth access for those entitled to access in and out of the security perimeter. While tens of thousands of onlookers walked and rode bicycles along the perimeter, the police, citing the fact that these were all dangerous demonstrators, did not let any delegates, tourists, or journalists in or out. Russian high-ranking officials also found themselves in this situation. At the same time, the police behaved surprisingly inappropriately, being rude even to the summit delegates.
Of course, there were some aggressive protests. Several police cars were burned, and the windows of banks that were outside the security perimeter were smashed. "We've never seen crime like this," said Toronto's police chief. He said that the anarchists, having done their dirty deed, cowardly hid among the crowd of peaceful demonstrators - apparently, the police, who had never seen such a “rampant crime”, expected that everyone who threw a stone at the offices of Canadian banks would immediately surrender repentantly. And the government immediately tried to blame otherworldly forces. According to TASS, Stephen Harper's administration issued a statement saying that acts of violence "are not the Canadian way of expressing our views." When the anarchist attacks ended (and this happened quite quickly), the police seemed to still have a lot of strength left. Special forces units blocked one street or another, or entertained passers-by with “psychological attacks,” marching to the rhythmic sound of batons on plastic shields. In this sense, the most eloquent slogan of the demonstrators was this: “$1 bln for housing, not police” - “a billion for housing, not police.”
Yesterday, the thoughts of a number of G20 leaders were far from Toronto. The teams of Germany and England played at the World Cup in South Africa. Before the start of the morning session, Dmitry Medvedev managed to write on his Twitter: “Germany and England are playing today. I sincerely wish good luck to both teams. In any case, beautiful football will win.” British Prime Minister David Cameron, still a newcomer to major international forums, comes first to every meeting in Canada - this happened yesterday. Angela Merkel appeared later, when the string of presidents and prime ministers was coming to an end. Dressed in a bright red jacket, her appearance left no doubt about who would win, even despite the red uniform of the entire English team. In the end, as Dmitry Medvedev promised, beautiful - German - football won (match details).
Summarizing the G20 debate is not easy, and certainly no one won by as much as Joachim Löw's team. Yesterday, by the time this issue of Vremya Novostei was signed, the G20 meeting was continuing, although some agreements were already known. Thus, between Germany and the United States, apparently, a draw has been recorded regarding budget policy. As you know, Berlin insisted on an early end to fiscal stimulus programs and a transition to a policy of reducing budget deficits. Washington, for its part, argues that economic growth is so fragile that the end of fiscal stimulus will almost lead to a second wave of the global crisis. According to Russian Presidential Adviser Arkady Dvorkovich, as of Saturday an understanding had been reached: it was time to move on to a policy of fiscal consolidation, but subject to the preservation of economic stimulation mechanisms in the short term.
In another “match,” according to preliminary data, the European Union defeated the “team” of countries with emerging markets, including Russia, with the United States playing passively. Yesterday during the meeting it became known that the IMF quota reform, which should be completed by the end of this year, will be linked to other issues of reforming the fund, such as changing the structure of its management, the management election system, and updating financing mechanisms. It is precisely this kind of linkage that Europe is interested in, which will have to give up a significant share of its quota in the IMF capital in favor of countries whose quota does not correspond to their increased role in the world economy. Now, by combining unrelated issues of reforming the fund, it will be easier for Europeans to “recoup” the lost quota in other areas. Finally, in the third debate, European activist Nicolas Sarkozy was defeated: there would be no global banking tax. Many countries, including Russia, consider its introduction inappropriate, so the discussion on this topic, it seems, can be considered exhausted.
For the first time, Canada organized a business summit parallel to the G20, where each country was represented by two people from the financial and industrial sectors of the economy. “Any additional taxation creates problems and additional costs for the banking sector, which, accordingly, affects the cost of banking services,” RIA Novosti quotes the opinion of VTB head Andrei Kostin, who represented the Russian financial sector. “It seems to me that some of the measures proposed by the most developed countries, including taxation on banks, are not related to the tasks of improving control and supervision, but to the task of simply getting more money, to compensate for the really large costs that governments incurred during the anti-crisis measures, especially since their budget is not in order,” the banker believes.
The next G8 summit will be held in a year in Nice, and the G20 next autumn in Seoul. Read about the formal results of the G20 summit in tomorrow's issue of Vremya Novostey.