Blickpunkt Großbritannien Büro London November 2008 “This week, our leaders have a chance to make the world anew” More than 60 years ago in New Hampshire, the world's economies were recast. Now, as they lie in ruin, Gordon Brown must inspire those meeting for Bretton Woods II. Will Hutton* The most important economic summit for a generation begins in Washington next Saturday. The leaders of the major industrialised countries, China, Russia, Brazil and India, along with the heads of the IMF, UN, World Bank and EU meet to discuss how to reform and then govern the international financial system. Summit aims do not get any more ambitious. Fundamental questions are being raised about how capitalism is to be organised. It will be an achievement if, next Saturday, they get beyond agreeing on core principles and a commitment to talk more. But urgency is vital. The EU forced * Will Hutton is Chief Executive of The Work Foundation and a well-known writer and colum­nist. This article was first published in The Ob­server , November 9 th , 2008. the pace by declaring on Friday that the summiteers should come up with answers within 100 days. It is an ambitious deadline. It took nearly two years of discussion before there was sufficient agreement to attempt the 1944 Bretton Woods conference that established the postwar international financial system and to which this week's summit is being compared. But shared awareness that the system is broken and that we risk a global depression is concentrating minds. Where to start? The architects of Bretton Woods knew they had to avoid the beggar-thy­neighbour policies of the Thirties and that if Britain and the US could clinch a deal, then everybody else would have to follow. Even then Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung London Office The Chandlery(609) 50 Westminster Bridge Road London SE1 7QY, UK Phone+44(0)20 7721 8745 Fax+44(0)20 7721 8746 e-mail website feslondon@feslondon.org.uk www.feslondon.org.uk