Europe crisis leaves French G-20 goals in tatters

French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised an “ambitious and humble” year as leader of the Group of 20 rich and developing economies, and he has a lot to be humble about. Despite a warning earlier this year from Christine Lagarde then his finance minister, now IMF chief that a failure to address global imbalances would “lead us straight into the wall of another debt crisis,” that is exactly where the G-20 has wound up.Now the finance ministers and central bankers gathering for two days of talks here beginning Friday must explain how they let the global economy run straight towards the edge of a clearly marked cliff and what they can still do to stop it from falling over it. It was only last February, when the mandarins of finance last met in Paris, that US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said “The global economy by almost every measure is in the best shape it”s been in at any time in the last two or three years.” “I think there is justifiable, growing confidence,” he said.Finance officials from Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere will now be treated to the spectacle of their European counterparts promising to do “whatever it takes” to avert a collapse of the common euro currency.European leaders have asked for more time to figure out how theyll achieve that. Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel now say such a plan will be ready before the G-20 leaders summit in Cannes in early November, possibly by the time of an EU summit Oct. 23. That will be too late to give finance ministers and central bankers meeting in Paris something substantial to announce. An official at the French Finance Ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity, in fact appeared to characterize this weekends meeting as just prep for the EU summit.The decision to postpone a European leaders meeting to October 23, and Sarkozy’s and Merkel’s pledge to have Europes house in order by the end of the month, succeeded in one thing: lowering expectations for this weekend’s G-20 meeting.