The financial crisis may have shocked world leaders into taking seriously their own commitments to more global co-ordination in economic affairs, but getting from talk to action remains an uphill struggle. This makes progress on regional co-operation all the more pressing. The opinion of Haruhiko Kuroda, president of the Asian Development Bank, that “east Asian countries are well advised to start a serious effort to co-operate” on currencies deserves a hearing.
The East Asia summit, where Mr Kuroda made his remarks, caps a year of advances in cross-border co-operation among Asian and Pacific nations. One – a notch on Mr Kuroda's own belt – was the agreement by ADB shareholders to triple its capital to $165bn.
Another important success was to strengthen the Chiang Mai initiative, whose member nations now share in a $120bn multilateral currency swap agreement. Together with bilateral swap lines this will help countries resist speculative attacks on their currencies, weakening one reason for the region's gargantuan accumulation of official reserves: its determination never again to be vulnerable to the capital flight that laid waste to Asian economies 12 years ago. That makes a rebalanced world economy a bit more achievable.