G20 Members to Work Toward Jobs and Stimulus — Maybe

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Russian Church ImageThe Joint G20 Finance and Labour Ministers’ Meeting gathered in Russia recently. The most important statement by the group indicated that first among the priorities of the G20 is new stimulus programs aimed at taming unemployment. However, nothing about the stated plans involved any specifics, which has become a regular part of comments made by both major governments and organizations like the International Monetary Fund that band them together.

The statement of the G20 included this:

The focus of the meeting was the possibility of elaborating coordinated policy by finance and labour and employment ministries in the G20 countries to promote strong, sustainable and balanced growth and a supportive environment for job creation.

The discussion was structured around the two interrelated topics, namely, governments’ role in creating incentives and eliminating barriers to investment in job creation, and cost effective social policies to facilitate job creation and inclusive societies.

The “coordinated policy” part of the plans have not worked in the past. The primary economic plans of the nations are too far from one and other and often compete. The interest of Russia often are different from those of Europe, and joint efforts to add jobs, if one nation has to help the other in that regard is very unlikely.

“Cost effective” in another phrase that does not carry any weight. It implies that most of the nations in the G20 have the wherewithal to invest in programs that create jobs. The is not true for almost every one of the G20 nations that have to wrestle with slow growth an rising national deficits like the rest of the world does.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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