Wide-spread protests in London greeted the world leaders participating in the G-20 talks. At some points police and the demonstrators clashed. Some protestors smashed the windows of the RBS bank and vandalized the offices and the equipment. The RBS employees were not present. By all accounts the G-20 Summit is not going to be a festive affair. Apart from the scenes of people marching in anti-capitalist anger, the heads of state are not in any sort of agreement on how to fix the global economic mess. German Chancellor Merkel and French President Sarkozy are not happy about the proposals currently on the table before the G-20. And Sarkozy threatened that he will simply leave the Summit if the group doesn’t agree to adopt a strong regulatory regime for financial institutions. Barack Obama even though he abandoned the push for a coordinated global stimulus, did say in the Press Conference with Gordon Brown that the world can’t expect America to be the sole engine of the renewed economic growth and that other countries will need to “pick up the pace.” Well, that leaves Gordon Brown to cheer everybody on. The formal meetings begin with dinner tonight. President Obama met the Chinese President Hu Jintao for the first time. The two leaders had a private conversation. An official announcement followed that the U.S. President will visit China sometime in the second half of this year. The White House issued a statement that U.S. and China will create a new Strategic Economic Dialogue between the two countries, led on the U.S. side by Secretaries Clinton and Giethner, and on the Chinese side by State Councilor Dai Bingguo and Vice Premier Wang Qishan. The subject of currencies (either the dollar, or the yuan) did not come up. The White House official statement on the meeting of the U.S. and Chinese Presidents did mention that the U.S. President is committed to halving the U.S. deficit once the economic recovery is under way, a hint that he might view continued reliance on heavy borrowing from China as a problem; and Chinese President’s stated commitment to expand domestic demand to ensure sustainable growth. Back in the U.S. the stock market is doing well today on the news of the rising manufacturing index and better than expected housing data. The ISM’s manufacturing index rose to 36.3 in March, for a third month in a row (a reading of 50 is the dividing line between contraction and growth). The National Association of Realtors reported a 2.1 percent gain in pending home re-sales in February. The stocks featured on the Dow Jones index have been consistently gaining throughout the day and by mid-day trading, the index was up 175 points. NASDAQ and S&P 500 both gained well over 1% by that point in the day, as well.