G20, the unaccountable & very powerful group

The Group of Twenty, known as G20, is an unaccountable and very powerful organization that arose from the need to resolve issues in the absence of a true world government. The name G20 refers to its twenty-member entities.

They are a mixture of the world’s seven largest economies, grouped as the G7, consisting of the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

The other members of G20 are some fast-growing, newly emerging economies such as India, China, Brazil, South Korea, Indonesia, and Mexico.

Others were included more for their natural resources or for reasons of geopolitics rather than the dynamism of their economies; examples are Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Still, others were added for geographic balance, including Australia, South Africa, Turkiye, and Argentina.

The European United was invited for good measure, even though it is not a country, because its Central bank issues one of the world’s reserve currencies. Some economic heavyweights such as Spain, the Netherlands, and Norway were officially left out, but they are sometimes invited to attend the G20 meetings anyway because of their economic importance. G20 and Friends might be a more apt appellation.