Economy in intensive care while G7 squabbles

(MarketWatch) -- Global economic recovery will take coordinated action among all the big economies, the International Monetary Fund warned this week, but as the IMF's spring meeting opens in Washington this weekend, the big economies are still squabbling over who's to blame for the crisis, and who should bear the cost of fixing it.

That's about the shape of things as financial leaders from the Group of Seven and larger Group of 20 gather Friday for the next round of meetings to try to put the global economy back together.
The meetings come only three weeks after President Barack Obama joined his G20 colleagues in London to set the agenda for global recovery.
Although hailed by many at the time, the G20 leaders' agreement now seems to be less than meets the eye.

The leaders could not make progress on further stimulus measures or on new global regulation for the out-of-control financial sector. The one initiative they could all agree on was to give the IMF a ton of new funding to lend to countries in trouble, and the G20 ultimately pledged a headline-grabbing $1.1 trillion in loans and guarantees to the international agency.
"Leaders love to give the IMF an assignment when they don't know what else to do," said Timothy Adams, a former Treasury undersecretary of international affairs in the Bush administration.

There is plenty of skepticism about this initiative.
More money for the IMF is nice, but it is "hardy going to solve the world's crisis," said Desmond Lachman, a former IMF official and now an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

Experts question the $1 trillion figure, saying it relies on double-counting.
And even a smaller amount is by no means assured.
"The big question this weekend is whether the amount of resources announced at G20 will be translated into firm commitments," said Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow on the global economy at the Brookings Institute, and a former IMF official.
A "complicated tussle" has broken out at the IMF between the industrial nations and emerging countries, Prasad said.

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