On September 24th and 25th, the world's financial representatives and leaders came together to discuss economic policies and to address the global financial crisis in Pittsburgh. leaders, installing themselves as permanent stewards of the world economy for the first time, agreed on a tighter regime for bankers' bonuses and mapped out an economic order in which countries would be urged to co-operate to avoid building up excessive trade deficits or surpluses.
Gordon Brown hailed the result of the summit in the former steelmaking city of Pittsburgh as a victory for British thinking and persistence, insisting the economic regime would have an impact in restoring balanced growth.
The G20 leaders agreed a system whereby they would collectively agree broad objectives every year, and then make themselves subject to a form of peer review supervised by the IMF.
The aim will be to encourage over-consuming countries, such as the US, to scale back spending and prompt those countries hoarding big surpluses, such as China and Germany, to boost consumer demand.
Barack Obama described the agreement as the opening of a "new era of engagement". "We cannot tolerate the same old boom and bust economies of the past," he said at the close of the two-day summit. "We can't grow complacent. We can't wait for a crisis, to co-operate."
The G20 also agreed to continue with the current stimulus measures, saying they had been effective in preventing the recession tipping into a great depression. The IMF is now predicting 3% growth worldwide next year, but Brown said "the recovery is still very fragile".
He claimed the stimulus measures implemented so far had saved 10 million jobs worldwide and a further 15 million could be saved in the coming year.
Dr.Shaukat Ali, Associate Professor of Business &Finance at New York's Long Island University talks about the issues discussed and resolved at the just concluded Pittsburgh G-20 Summit.