Twenty-five years ago next week, a small group of men gathered in the Plaza Hotel in New York to remake the world economy. The accord they struck, by which governments in the world’s five leading powers combined to weaken the dollar and rebalance the world economy, stands as perhaps the high-water mark of international economic co-operation over the past 40 years.
Today, as deep fissures have opened between the world’s leading economies over exchange rates, global imbalances and deficit reduction, a reawakening of the Plaza Accord spirit could be invaluable.
But though some ambitious souls think that the G20 could be a forum in which such a grand bargain can be struck, the path is more difficult than in 1985.