Firstly, I think that the reason Geithner/US is the odd one out is simply that the US is both the beneficiary and victim of the dollar being the global reserve currency. Instead of accepting Keynes' International Clearing Union/Bancor proposal at Bretton Woods the US could not resist the seductive benefits of being able to write cheques they would never have to redeem.

Now Geithner is finally stuck in the horns of the Triffin Dilemma with the US having become unsustainably indebted to the world. The point is that he knows that any austerity on the part of his creditors will reduce their capacity to fund US debt.

Secondly, the more disciplined the society the less they need austerity, and vice versa.  Since austerity must be enforced, those most in need of it (according to the dogma) are those least likely to achieve it.

In my view the system is terminally fucked by the wealth inequality that is structurally built in. But I optimistically believe that the spread of new technologies and protocols will enable networked complementary systems to arise from the bottom up. The more I see of what is going on the more convinced I am that I am observing a 'Great Awakening'.

Here the Third World (entirely absent from the G20) and the domestic third worlds (eg California's unemployed youth and immigrants) have an advantage because they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by community-based organising. The key to this IMHO will be mobile payments and micro credit on the one hand (and I do NOT mean micro loans) and micro investment on the other.

Peer to Peer Finance in other words.

Thirdly, it's been interesting to read in the MSM about the current Bilderberg meeting in Spain. The very fact that we are even reading about it is indicative.

Daniel Estulin - who has written a book on Bilderberg -  may have put his finger on what is going on (my bold).

'These people want empire'

"It is a self-perpetuating system, a virtual spider web of interlocked financial, political, economic and industry interests," he said.

Actually, it's not much of a secret any longer and not much conspiracy, said Estulin.

"It's a meeting of people who represent a certain ideology," he said. "The ideology is of a one world company limited.

"Bilderberg is a medium of bringing together financial institutions which are the world's most powerful and most predatory financial interests. And at this time, it is that combination which is the worst enemy of humanity," he said.

He said the citizens of the world have forced the higher level of awareness about the plots and plans "by becoming very aware that presidents and prime ministers and your little shrinking queens and kings are puppets of powerful forces working from behind the scenes."

He said that's where the door to success may open.

"Something has happened to us, the people in the midst of this general economic collapse. People at large are gripped by something they don't always understand. But, it compels them to act in a certain way, in their own interest. That's what they are doing in Greece. That's what they are doing in Spain, in the United States. It's called the anthropic principle. It's like a tidal movement came upon us and washed our fears away. As people realise that their existence is threatened, they have lost their fear, and Bilderberg and others sense it," he said.

"Perhaps that's why at a recent Council on Foreign Relations speech in Montreal, Zbigniew Brzezinski ... warned that a 'global political awakening,' in combination with infighting amongst the elite, was threatening to derail the move towards a one world government," he said.

It is the direct instantaneous connections of the Internet that are enabling and driving this process of political awakening and a new consensual political economy which is reality-based and action-based. In my opinion the global financial architecture will look very different within five years at most: but it will take generations for cultural changes to follow.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson