Signals from Germany and China offer hope that a key goal of G20 leaders – a better balance in global trade – is more achievable than it looks.

Compare a Black Bloc hooligan lobbing an incendiary bomb into police cruiser, during the Toronto summit, to a Wall Street investment banker tossing a collateralized debt instrument based on flimsy mortgages into the investment system. Both devices explode. But there’s no confusing the two people in a police line-up, writes CIGI Senior Director of Communications and Public Affairs, Fred Kuntz.

Stock markets perked up on Monday after world leaders failed to agree on a global bank levy and softened the timetable for new capital requirements at a do-little G20 summit in Canada which posed questions about the forum's effectiveness.

The debts of local Chinese governments are not huge or risky enough to evolve into a crisis like the one sweeping Europe, but the situation does deserve attention, economists at home and abroad have said.