The G20 summit in Pittsburgh has ended. A basic consensus has been found regarding management salaries, strengthening of the IMF and increasing the capital buffers of banks. Will this package of measures be enough to fulfil the promise of the G20 to avoid future crises? To ask that in another way: If the package had been wrapped up five years ago, would it have been able to prevent the real estate crisis of 2007/2008?

The half hearted effort to limit management pay is a symbolic if not indeed a populist act. Would the bankers at lower pay levels really have distributed fewer housing credits?

The strengthening of the IMF seems cynical. This was the institution that had demanded the liberalisation of capital markets. If the budget of the IMF had been tripled five years ago, 5% of the voting right given to China and an explanation given to it that the freedom of capital markets was not quite that easy a matter, would that have prevented the crisis?

As agreed two weeks ago by telephone across six time-zones we met on Wednesday morning with all Attac-members in Pittsburgh to exchange information, plan actions and to know each other. We are coming from Norway, Canada, Germany, Italy and Austria, we talk in German, French, but mainly in English with different accents. In the assembly  hall underneath the Monumental Baptist Church – its administrators allowed the Tent City on their land and made thereby possible the only tent-city in Pittsburgh (all others were not allowed) – are meetings of other activists’ groups besides ours. Already the preparations for lunch are starting, we assist cutting a mountain of strawberries into little pieces. Is does not take long for us to start chatting about our experiences and acquaintances until now and about planning the coming days.