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Leaders from the world's biggest economies are getting together in Cannes this week for a G20 summit , and they are hoping to repeat the success of the 2009 G20 summit in London where they faced down a severe global financial crisis. Simon Johnson , former chief economist for the IMF, warns us not to set such high expectations this time around. Writing at Economix , Johnson explains how the conditions are quite different this time: In 2009, the primary problem was slumping economies in the United States and Western Europe. It was in the perceived individual interest of those economies to engage in some fiscal stimulus – and they were happy to present this as a joint approach. China was also willing to stimulate its economy, as its policy makers feared that slowing global trade would reduce Chinese exports. President Obama’s appeal for fiscal stimulus around the world was pushing on an open door. Now the issue is quite different. We have a sovereign debt crisis within the euro zone, in which countries that have borrowed heavily are facing the prospect of restructuring their debts. The euro zone summit meeting last week established that Greek debt would fall by about half (relative to face value), although this does not clearly put Greece onto a sustainable debt path. Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou announced a plan on Monday for a referendum on the plan, a move with the potential to build political support for the needed reforms, and on Wednesday his cabinet offered its full support. But another outcome — if the government does not fall in the meantime, making the referendum plan moot — could be a Greek exit from the euro and a default on its debts in disorderly fashion, without any kind of international framework or outside financial support. But the real issue is Italy, as it has been at least since the summer. The Europeans are only beginning to come to grips with the centrality of Italy in the European debt web – glance at Bill Marsh’s recent graphic to get the point. Italy has more than 1.9 trillion euros in debt outstanding; this is the third-largest bond market in the world. In the aftermath of the Greek referendum announcement, the yield on Italian debt rose above 6.1 percent. The standard view is that if this reaches 6.5 percent, Italy will need to seek assistance in the form of a backstop fund to guarantee there will be no default. Ultimately, Johnson believes Europe must go through some major restructuring--"the equivalent of a constitutional convention." And that takes time. Read The European Debt Crisis and the G-20 Summit Meeting here .

Simon Johnson--Professor of economics at MIT , a member of the Panel of Economic Advisers for the Congressional Budget Office , former chief economist for the IMF --and his co-conspirator at Baseline Scenario , James Kwak --formerly a McKinsey consultant and now a student at Yale Law School--came out with a new book this spring. 13 Bankers follows a theme that Johnson has been pushing for the last few years: the danger of concentrated financial power. He spoke about the book, and his argument that the 'too big to fail' banks need to be harnessed before financial crisis hits yet again, in this Thoughtcast interview: Simon Johnson Defies 13 Bankers "Too Big to Fail" from thoughtcast on Vimeo . For more on 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown , including an excerpt, click here .

At a meeting of G7 leaders this weekend, European ministers promised to keep pressure on Greece's government and make sure that country's debt problems won't spread and create larger financial problems around the continent. Simon Johnson , for one, is not calmed, and thinks that European leaders are "not being careful," and that the stronger eurozone nations--France, Germany--need to do more to fight off serious financial crisis. Here's Johnson writing at The Baseline Scenario : The IMF cannot help in any meaningful way. And the stronger EU countries are not willing to help – in part because they want to be tough, but also because they do not have effective mechanisms for providing assistance-with-strings. Unconditional bailouts are simple – just send a check. Structuring a rescue package that will garner support among the German electorate – whose current and future taxes will be on the line – is considerably more complicated. The financial markets know all this and last week sharpened their swords. As we move into this week, expect more selling pressure across a wide range of European assets. As this pressure mounts, we’ll see cracks appear also in the private sector. Significant banks and large hedge funds have been selling insurance against default by European sovereigns. As countries lose creditworthiness – and, under sufficient pressure, very few government credit ratings will hold up – these financial institutions will need to come up with cash to post increasing amounts of collateral against their derivative obligations (yes, the same credit default swaps that triggered the collapse last time). Read Europe Risks Another Global Depression here .

We're past the one-year anniversaries of the fall of Lehman Brothers and the near collapse of AIG, but the question over what we have learned from the crisis is bothering more than a few big economic thinkers and policy makers. Emma Bonino is Vice President of Italy's senate, and she concludes in today's Financial TImes that global leaders seem to have learned very little: As the saga of platitudes on the financial crisis comes to an end, hard questions now lie on the hands of world leaders. And the number of hands has expanded, with the Group of 20 leading nations set to replace the G7 and G8 as the hub of global economic co-operation. Economic giants, such as China, India and Brazil, will now have a voice in shaping world finance. This, of course, illustrates that decentralisation of economic power in the new world order is an unstoppable development, which may prove to be a positive one if the newcomers behave as responsible stakeholders. But will all this summitry really make a difference? With the benefit of hindsight we can see the flaws in the financial system that allowed the collapse of Lehman Brothers to bring the global economy to its knees. But will we be able to say we wised up and put in place a better financial system? Unlikely. So far, all we have really done is change the decision-making body, while the causes and symptoms of the financial crisis remain unchecked. Small and medium-sized banks continue to file for bankruptcy at a worrying pace. We still have not curbed the noxious behaviour of big banks: their social and political importance was enhanced more than scrutinised by the financial fallout after the Lehman disaster. “No more Lehmans” was the motto, cried both by banks and the public. The toxic combination of bank subsidies and bankers’ bonuses have socialised losses and privatised gains. Read What did we really learn from the financial crisis here . In the Washington Post, Simon Johnson and James Kwak argue that if we learned anything from the events of a year ago, the time to act is now. "The next couple of months will be crucial in determining the shape of the financial system for decades to come," they write. And they don't hold a lot of confidence in the Obama administration's ability to push through reform: We have criticized the administration's reform proposals, in particular for not going far enough to address the problem of financial institutions that are "too big to fail." But we support much of what was in the original package, particularly the CFPA and increased regulation of complex financial products. The question now is how hard Obama and Geithner will fight for it. Financial regulation, like health care reform, has entered the phase where speeches and proposals matter less than arm-twisting and horse-trading on Capitol Hill. With health care, President Obama attempted to go over the heads of Congress, directly to the American people. With financial regulation, that is no longer an option, given the extent to which it has faded from public consciousness. Read It's Crunch Time: The Fight to Fix the Financial System Comes Down to This here .