The fears were a little overstated – not because the summit achieved much but because, in the US at least, this climactic moment came and went without anyone really noticing.

You might have thought that an emergency gathering of leaders from the world's 20 main rich and emerging economies, with the global economy poised for its worst slump since the Great Depression, would have aroused some interest. The event was deemed unworthy of the main section of Saturday's New York Times. (Room was found on the front page for a story about how hard it is to open the “clamshell” packaging of toys and electronic gadgets. The summit, “A crisis in finance”, made page 3 of the business section.) On television news, world leaders' efforts to stave off disaster were displaced by speculation about Hillary Clinton's next job and by fires in California (four firemen injured).

For most Americans, and doubtless for many summit participants as well, the meeting did not matter for the simple reason that the president-elect was not there. Barack Obama sent representatives, choosing not to attend himself. For Americans, that made it a non-event. Had the summit been held at the end of January, with the new president in office, it would have been seen as a world-historic moment. Timing is everything.