What Did I Miss In The G20 Statement?

Brad Setser reads the G20 statement ( I still say calling it a communique makes it sound like it's from Subcomandante Marcos ) with a different pair of eyes than I do:

"The G-20’s communiqué offered a surprisingly robust work program for regulatory reform. MIT’s Simon Johnson even worries that it may be too robust – and push banks to scale back their lending in a pro-cyclical way. I am a little less worried about this risk. I assume regulators recognize that a sensible macro-prudential regulatory framework requires raising capital charges in good times (to lean against the boom), not forcing banks to squeeze lending to conserve capital in bad times."

I read it three times, and didn't get any sense of this import.

Here's Niall Ferguson's take which I liked.

Here's Free Exchange:

"PERHAPS you recall that leaders of twenty of the world's largest economies sat down for a meeting this past weekend, in order to hash out what to do about all this financial crisis ado. The Economist has the recap:

JUDGED by the hubristic promises that preceded it, the G20 meeting was bound to disappoint. The leaders of the world’s 20 biggest rich and emerging economies, who had gathered in Washington, DC, on Saturday November 15th, did not remake global finance as some of them had promised. Nor, as others had hoped, did they come up with a detailed set of co-ordinated fiscal measures to counter the deepening global downturn (although they did talk of using fiscal measures “to rapid effect”). Nonetheless, the five-page communiqué contained more than just diplomatic blather.

As well as promising a “broader policy response” to the current crisis, the G20’s leaders laid out a detailed plan for financial reform. They promised to “strive” for a deal on the stalled Doha round of world trade talks by the end of the year and, more importantly, made a collective pledge not to raise any barriers to trade and investment over the coming year. Add in the promises made around the gathering’s fringes, particularly Japan’s pledge to bolster the IMF’s kitty by lending it $100 billion, and the weekend yielded enough to justify the traffic jams in Washington, DC–and to mark an important shift in global economic governance."

I think most observers had very low expectations of the summit, given the lame duck host and his deliberate, expectations-lowering rhetoric, but some still came away disappointed. Like Dani Rodrik:

I was not expecting any substantial agreement on international regulatory coordination or any semblance of a new Bretton Woods, so I am not disappointed on that score. What I was looking for were three things: (i) coordination on fiscal stimulus; (ii) a commitment to provide more liquidity support, as needed, to prevent a further spread of the crisis to emerging nations; and (iii) a clear commitment not to engage in trade protection, with a monitoring mechanism to ensure the pledge is being observed.

How does the statement do in these regards? So-so. There is no coordination in the fiscal arena, the promises made to emerging markets are vague, and even though there is a clear statement on protection and export subsidization, there is no monitoring or enforcement mechanism.

He wanted more. That will have to wait."

They seem to agree with Setser. Rodrik is in the middle. What did I miss? It was simply a laundry list of hopes. I guess that's important. As a piece of prose, it lacked any specificity.