Source: Wisconsin Public Radio's Conversations with Kathleen Dunn

With 26 delegations and a daunting list of economic issues to address, next week’s G20 Summit is unlikely to accomplish as much as the world is hoping. On Wisconsin Public Radio, David Rothkopf discussed the state of the world economy, painting a dire picture of the current situation yet leaving room for optimism regarding future growth.

“There is almost no place that you can think of in the global economy that doesn’t require a jump-start right now,” Rothkopf said. Therefore, the first priority should be to “stop the bleeding,” followed by policies that aim to restore growth. The G20 Summit, however, is likely to produce little consensus on the best policies to achieve these goals because it will be difficult to reconcile the widely varying economic plans of all 26 delegations. Some of the most important policy questions are likely to remain unresolved, including the debate over whether countries should embrace big stimulus packages and whether new international regulatory mechanisms should be established.

Nonetheless, Rothkopf noted that economies tend to repair themselves over time, predicting that the global economy might begin to see a resurgence in growth at the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010. The interesting question is not whether we will recover but what the world will look like once we have emerged from this crisis. New industries will lead our future growth, perhaps with a focus on green industry, and existing industries may see large-scale changes. Inevitably, geopolitical relationships will shift, leaving a world with new opportunities and dilemmas.