A soft body worked better that all hard bodies

Robert Zoellick, the President of the World Bank, has declared October 6 as his cousin, the international monetary Fund (IMF), had to "make new friends on Facebook", referring to the community site where users meet, Exchange photos, promises and small stories. The comment of the President of the World Bank is anecdotal. It is not only a little youth should enter international organizations born in 1944 in Bretton Woods.

Everyone agrees today to say that the financial crisis as a catalyst for rethinking deep financial and economic diplomacy international. Nicolas Sarkozy has managed to rally his European colleagues to appeal, precisely, a Bretton Woods 2. But the difficulty is that everyone is also agree that no one is in agreement on the fundamental problems: neither the trade, as evidenced by the failure of Doha, or on what it takes to try a little slow warming of the Earth, energy, or the future of food and agriculture, nor of course on the strength of the "regulation" which must be applied to banks and sisters. All attempts at political risk in this context remain dead letters.

Robert Zoellick proposes to eliminate the G7, with the only major developed countries, to extend it to a "leading group" combining cases, China, the Brazil, the India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, etc., to arrive on each topic taken one after the other in a mass criticism. According to records, the number and the list of participants will be variable in this Bretton Woods-Facebook. Diplomacy is the art form a nucleus of departure then aggregate "of new friends."

The example was given in Europe to the rescue of the banks, the French President is bringing together initially as three European countries in the euro area but by inviting Britain, essential in the field of finance. Then the solution was sold to other European capitals, and it has, then crossed the Atlantic, Washington storing its own plan (called "paulson") to be there.

Capitalism is hard. It imposes its bubbles and their bursting, unsustainable trade imbalances, increasing inequality, the explosive misfortunes. Nicolas Sarkozy believes that the time has come to the "refounding". But how French proposals remain poor outside the limitation of tax havens and imposing rules on credit rating agencies. The agenda of the Bretton Woods 2 is well empty because it collides with the differences highlighted by Robert Zoellick, no country is ready to cede its sovereignty.

An article in the Economist Ignazio Angeloni, the Bruegel Institute, provides a key to exit (1). Analysing the outcome of the financial crisis, it observes that neither the European Union, despite its multiple instances and its millions of meetings, nor the Eurogroup, or no institution established, is to agree on the necessary reforms of the banking regulation. But that on the other hand, things have advanced to the level of the financial stability Forum (FSF), an informal entity bringing in Basel by the representatives of the organs of control 12 large countries, central banks, the IMF, as well as experts and bankers. Established in 1998 to just propose reforms of the international financial system on a German idea she worked in the shadows, very seriously.

When the crisis erupted, the regular bodies such as the EU nothing did suggest that the "small common denominator". It was only in October that was born the solution of the political will of the g-7 meeting (this time still useful) with the work of the FSF. A soft body worked better that all hard bodies.

The note is General: any idea of wanting to create globalized problems "World Government" is a chimera. As in the simple level of a European Government, as suggests again the French President. Actually as flexible, ad hoc, informal proceedings but high level walk. Climate, crisis, agriculture: policy is back but Bretton Wood 2 will be on the net: is Facebook the right model.