In 1973, peak oil in the US, the end of the dollar’s convertibility to gold, and the rise in OPEC prices following the Yom Kippur War all combined to create a new situation. This is what is known as the “oil shock”. The US Treasury Secretary, George Shultz, decided to coordinate Western responses to this new situation. He convened an informal meeting in the White House library of the economic ministers of West Germany, France (Valéry Giscard d’Estaing) and the United Kingdom. Two years later, in 1975, Helmut Schmidt and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, now Chancellor and President of the Republic respectively, proposed elevating these informal meetings to the level of Heads of State and Government. Thus was created the G5, then G6, G7, G8 and G7 again.

The G7 is not an institution. It was not founded by international treaty, has no statutes, and no permanent secretariat. It’s just a forum; a place for discussion, not decision-making. Its only rule is its rotating presidency. For 48 years, it has talked and talked, promising great things, but doing nothing of the sort. This is because, behind a few announcements, it held secret meetings, the importance of which we only understood after the fact.

The G7 coordinated the rules of the financial game. It convinced non-Anglo-Saxons to make capital anonymous. In the space of half a century, Western states have accepted that they can no longer know who owns anything. The system of trusts became widespread in all member states, with “fiducies” in France, for example. The G7 is responsible for the current form of capitalism, where the owners of capital can take decisions in secret that they would not dare to take in public.

In 1999, the G7 in Cologne decided to convene a meeting of the economic ministers and central bank governors of its members and 13 other countries to coordinate their responses to economic crises. A crisis shook Asia, culminating in the subprime crisis in the United States. These meetings were dominated by German Minister Hans Eichel, who was in the process of restructuring his country. He ensured that this group did not follow the Anglo-Saxon diktat, but bowed to the rules of non-Anglo-Saxon bankers.

At the suggestion of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and with the support of the UK, this group was elevated to the level of Heads of State and Government. This became the G20, then the G21. US President George W. Bush, sensing that things were in danger of getting out of hand, agreed only if the group met for the first time under his presidency in Washington.

Like the G7, the G20 is not an institution. It was not founded by international treaty, has no statutes and no permanent secretariat. It’s just a forum; a place for discussion, not decision-making. Except that this time, the majority is no longer Western. The states invited, notably China, are not imperialist powers, but developing countries. They have therefore tried not to adopt the rules of Anglo-Saxon finance, nor those of its German counterpart, but those of development for all.