It became a summit of leaders after Paul Martin, Canada's foreign minister and future Prime Minister, proposed it. In the first instance, he was the chief architect of the meeting as a finance minister.
It was primarily a reaction to the 1990s debt crisis, which began in Mexico and was followed by the Asian Debt Crisis of 1997. Russia's economic collapse, followed by the consequences for the United States. This was most evident in the 1998 collapse of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.
With the recent rapid globalisation, the G7 and G8, as well as the Bretton Woods System, have been unable to generate financial stability. The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2010 has heightened the urgency of the situation.
With so much at stake, the last summit was critical in developing strategies to prevent the economy from collapsing. With the situation in nearly every country reaching another critical stage and unemployment at an all-time high in many of them, unrest will worsen unless something changes.
With so much at stake, one might wonder why President Trump, the elected head of government in the United States, chose to abstain from the meeting while the World Bank's president delivered his address. Ivanka Trump took his seat at the table, between the leaders.
The question is whether Trump can be a team player in something as important as this, or if he is so disconnected from reality that it doesn't bother him. His attitude is unmistakably different from that of his predecessors, who worked tirelessly to secure this summit and use it to benefit the world. Without strong US support, the next financial crisis could be even worse than the last."""
