... So here are four such games. The first is played within the financial sector: the aim of each player is to ensure that bad loans end up somewhere else, while collecting a fee for each sheet unwrapped along the way. The second game is played between finance and the rest of the private sector, the aim being to sell the latter as much service as possible, while ensuring that the losses end up with the customers. The third game is played between the financial sector and the state: its aim is to ensure that, if all else fails, the state ends up with these losses. Then, when the state has bailed it out, finance can win by shorting the states it has bankrupted. The fourth game is played among states. The aim is to ensure that other countries end up with any excess supply. Surplus countries win by serially bankrupting the private and then public sectors of trading partners. It might be called: “beggaring your neighbours, while feeling moral about it”. It is the game Germany is playing so well in the eurozone.
What have these four games to do with the G20 summit? In a word, everything. The first game scattered toxic assets across the financial system. The second left the non-bank private sector with a debt overhang and deleveraging. The third duly damaged the finances of states. The fourth helped cause the crisis and is now an obstacle to recovery. Above all, these games are all linked to one another and so have to be changed together. The G20 does understand this, but only up to a point.
