At the insistence of the Obama administration the final text of the G20 communiqué referred to the need to sequence fiscal consolidation so that “the momentum of private sector recovery” was not jeopardized.41 But this was trumped by demands for fiscal consolidation.42 After the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, at a time when, according to the OECD, 47 million people were unemployed across the rich world, and the total figure for underemployed and discouraged workers was closer to 80 million, the members of the G20 committed themselves to simultaneously halving their deficits over the
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