GORDON BROWN'S $1 TRILLION GATHERING

That is the headline Gordon Brown wants to see after today's gathering of leaders from the world's richest 20 countries at the ExCel centre in London's Docklands. The leaders are now at a working lunch and agreement is close, so Brown will get his headline. He will describe it, I suspect, as a $1 trillion stimulus for the global economy -- $500bn through loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for countries in trouble, another $250bn of liquidity from IMF currency reserves (special drawing rights) and $250bn of trade finance.It's not the same as the fiscal stimulus that Brown and President Barack Obama would have wanted a few weeks back, even though they'll welcome the deal later this afternoon. But it's not a bad substitute and the PM hopes it will help to limit the length of the recession. He will be able to claim he has hosted a successful summit-- though it was never really likely to fail, which would have caused chaos on the already jittery financial markets. And it's not a bad headline.

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