G20: Big Numbers, But 1 Matters Most
This report was filed by CBS News London producer Mimi Spillane.
How many people does it take to host an eight-hour meeting of world leaders? In short, thousands. Here are some of the staggering numbers:
Starting with how many people travel with the President of the United States: 500, and 200 of them are just to provide security.
Then we have the 10,500 eight-hour shifts being worked by London's law enforcement officers — that's 84,000 man-hours if I'm doing my math right.
Media: again, thousands. This is the media work-space under construction at the Excel Center, where Thursday's meeting will take place.
This is where I'm sitting now, two nights before the event. It's 10:30 p.m. I have to say, it's cold in here. As you can see, it's cavernous.
So what is expected Thursday? The biggest event could be the threatened walkout by France's President Sarkozy. The Europeans (primarily France and Germany) are concerned not so much with spending their way out of this recession (that's the U.S.-U.K. method), as finding ways of preventing it from happening in the future.
Sarkozy has threatened to leave the conference if he deems it unlikely the G20 leaders will be able to reach a real consensus on mechanisms that might actually alleviate the economic suffering worldwide.
The Brits may be hosting the summit, but a walkout would be a big blow to President Obama's first major overseas trip. It would do further damage to the British prime minister, who hoped this meeting would showcase him as savior of the world's economies and provide a much-needed bounce for his next election campaign.
Of course, a lot of people think these meetings are worthless anyway. Given the current economic mess, this one in particular should have been run as a teleconference. Twitter anyone?
Anyway, getting back to the numbers. Frankly, I would not expect to see any firm dollar amounts attached to anything.
The number which may truly be foremost in the minds of everyone here: 1.
That's how many temper tantrums by world leaders it would take to tarnish this summit's image.
It's also exactly how many ill-willed individuals it would take to somehow bypass all the security, and turn this event into a nightmare.