The Big G20 Summit came and went and that’s about it.

Now was anyone really expecting much out of the G -20 Summit except for leaders of nations around the world enjoying their stays at five star hotels and dinning the best cuisine money can buy?  Reality is that since the big G-5 meeting at the plaza hotel (this is when the Doc began his career on Wall Street) in 1985 which broke the back of the ever strengthening US$, not much has been accomplished.

One humorous issue of note that was deliberated by this expert panel was the need to establish a future early warning system that would provide an indicator of impending economic or financial market fallout.  Let’s not call this humorous, how about ridiculous in light of our current situation.

Over the past FEW YEARS, THERE HAS BEEN AN EARLY WARNING SYSTEM RINGING THE ALARM BELLS THAT AN ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL MARKET FALLOUT WAS COMING!!  Over the past few years, a host of well established and respected analysts and economists had warned of the negative ramifications of the housing bubble that was created and growing.  People like Stephen Roach, Jim Rogers, Peter Schiff, James Grant….the Doc and host of others have warned of the imbalances that were being created in the system and what could happen and eventually was likely to happen if the bubble burst.  The problem was that no one wanted to listen to traditional business theory such as risk management as the returns to real estate were consistently in the double digit zone.

The early warning was well in place and didn’t work…I guess history will repeat itself as “learning from mistakes” will dictate policy change.