´óÏó´«Ã½

Pittsburgh: Mr Brown looked sheepishly pleased as the president greeted him with an arm on his shoulder and three claps on his back. Mrs Brown held hands with the president. How special can you get?

Earlier, his spokesman had urged the American press to "stop reading those London tabloids". For some reason, I can hear in my head Kanye West delivering this line: "those London tabloids and all that roooobish". Sorry, but it is nearing the end of a long week.

Frustratingly longer than it need have been when the bus driver got hopelessly lost taking those of us in the White House contingent to the Pittsburgh conference centre. I must say that although the exasperation of journalists with deadlines to meet was pretty clear, they were more polite than their British counterparts would have been. Maps don't mean much in a city that has been closed down. I just hope it isn't a metaphor for what happens today.

There'll be a row about plans to give China a bigger role at the IMF and the World Bank at the expense of British and European influence. The elevation of the G20 itself will be part of this.

Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner spoke at a briefing and said that there must be sweeping changes to avoid sowing the seeds of a new crisis. But I was surprised when he suggested that the US was ready to go along with and to quickly accept new rules to curb bankers' big bonuses.

Although theoretically in favour, the administration had until now appeared to want to leave this politically tricky proposal on the back burner. It will stir up the domestic critics.

But the French had argued, in a striking phrase, that it wasn't the icing on the cake but the yeast that made the cake rise - and restrictions must be part of any new rules.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• |
• Reddit
• - What's this?