Last week’s G-20 economic summit in South Korea was widely depicted as a failure for the Obama administration and a rebuff for the United States. In many respects, it was. Obama remarked that if the U.S. hadn’t tried to set the agenda, it would have had an easier time. “Part of the reason that sometimes it seems that the United States is attracting some dissent is because we’re initiating ideas,” he said. “We’re putting them forward. The easiest thing for us to do would be to take a passive role and let things just drift which wouldn’t cause any conflict.”

It’s a fair comment but also an exercise in gilding the proverbial lily. The fact remains that the United States entered the summit hoping for joint agreement on addressing global surpluses and deficits and on currency valuations. The key players here, of course, are China and America, but China was not alone in rejecting American formulas for global economic stability. Germany and Great Britain were equally dismissive of American financial policy, and especially excoriating of the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke for recent measures to inject $600 billion of liquidity to spark what has so far been an anemic recovery in the United States.