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At the end of Obama’s press conference following the Group of 20 Summit last Thursday, a large crowd of journalists did something journalists never do: they gave a politician a standing ovation.

In a week that began with a flurry of meetings between the US president and his counterparts from China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Britain and others, and ends with Saturday’s NATO summit, the media’s uncharacteristic behavior might easily be forgotten. However, it will likely linger because it matched a sincere response over and above the supplication shown towards any occupant of the White House by the leaders of the G-20 countries.

The same cerebral and low-key approach used by President Obama in dealings with fellow leaders came out in often lengthy, but nuanced, answers to questions. “He actually answered the questions he was asked,” says one startled Asian reporter. President Obama he is being accorded high ratings from almost every quarter barring his conservative critics in the USA. In part, this comes because of the contrast Mr Obama strikes with the widely derided George W. Bush. Partly it has been prompted by the celebrity cult the new leader has generated in the US. But most of all, it is about Mr Obama’s unusual approach to foreigners. “I have come to listen, not to lecture,” he said several times this week.

Much of the time he appeared to mean it. The least expected endorsement came from Russia’s president Medvedev, who until he met President Obama had developed a taste for rubbing Americans the wrong way. But last Wednesday the Russian president unexpectedly invited him to visit this July, observing that Moscow’s warm weather that month would reflect the new warmth in US-Russian relations, Mr Medvedev said: “After this meeting, I am far more optimistic about the successful development of our relations and would like to thank President Obama for this opportunity.” Mark-to-Market Rule Gives More Clarity

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The Group of Seven, convened again in Rome, has ceding its traditional power to rebuild the world economy to a broader body of governments that now wield greater sway over global growth., the Group of Twenty. The U.S. Treasury Secretary and European Central Bank President joined their G-7 counterparts, for the discussions but it is the G-20 that now occupies the responsibility in responding to the world financial crisis.

The shift in influence to the G-20, whose members range from the USA to China to Saudi Arabia, reflects the fact that industrial nations alone lack the resources to fix the world’s economic problems. That curbs the G-7’s scope to deliver new initiatives this week, say economists and former officials. “The world has changed,” says Paul Martin, Canada’s former prime and finance minister who attended G-7 meetings and helped establish the G-20 a decade ago. “The G-20 reflects the realities of the global economy. Its finance ministers are becoming the dominant policy-making body.”

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