It is summit season. The Group of Eight club of leading industrialized powers held its annual shindig in Canada last week. That conclave was followed, for the first time, by the summit of the Group of 20, which accounts for 85 percent of global wealth and has emerged as the "director" of the global economy since the onset of the economic crisis.
The declaration from each meeting made plain the division of labor between the two: The G8 takes on political issues, while the G20 focuses on economic management. In theory, it is a nice system; in practice, both groups suffer the same fatal flaw: Individual national interests pre-empt group concerns, yielding high-minded declarations that are not enforced.
The G8 was in critical condition well before the 2008 economic crisis. The annual summit has been disparaged as a photo op. This year the group took note of the world beginning "a fragile recovery from the greatest economic crisis in generations," and then focused its energies on other global challenges.