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by RAY FLEMING
AFTER the almost euphoric reception of the G20 summit action plan in Britain and more widely also in Europe, it was a necessary corrective to see a rather less enthusiastic response in the United States. Republican party representatives and the right-wing media were almost totally negative - but that was no surprise.

More significant were leading articles in two of the most influential papers - the New York Times and the Washington Post. While both acknowledged that “hugely important” work had been done the former concluded that that the result “fell short” of what was needed and the latter said the President's “I think we did okay” was about right.

Both newspapers regretted that the summit concerned itself more with the future than the present, preferring to make plans to prevent another fiscal failure before mending the current one. The culprits were seen to be Angela Merkel of Germany and Nicolas Sarkozy of France who presented a united front of opposition to the American and British preference for further co-ordinated fiscal stimulus boosts. The Washington Post asked whether Barack Obama should have pushed harder for his policy but concluded that he may have been reluctant to do so when he was also committed to presenting a more reasonable face to the rest of the world than it had seen during the past eight years.

Nonetheless, Obama's warning that America alone could not be expected to be responsible for “voracious spending” to kick start a global trading recovery was noted as an important warning to other countries.