French President Nicolas Sarkozy takes his campaign for greater global food price and currency stability to Washington when he seeks President Obama's support for France's goals as head of the Group of 20 powers.
Soaring food prices and riots in places such as Algeria offer Sarkozy ammunition to press for more coordination between G20 governments to combat wild swings in vital commodity prices as well as exchange rates versus the long-dominant U.S. dollar.
The French president wants to use his run at the G20 helm in 2011 to start, if not finish, reforms of the monetary system at a time when many countries are tempted to let their currency drop to promote exports and growth after the worst downturn since World War Two, even if that can be at each others' expense.
Paris is also pressing for international efforts to impose greater transparency in commodity markets trading and pricing, and for tougher regulation of trading in commodity derivatives along the lines pursued for other investment derivatives in the wake of the financial markets crisis that preceded the economic downturn of 2008-2009, and the government debt crisis now.
"As we sense it, more multilateralism is the best answer to the increased instability in the world," a Sarkozy adviser said of a meeting happening on Monday in Washington. "We want to broach this thinking with the Americans and see if they are willing to join in such an approach, whereafter we can produce more precise proposals," said the advisor, who spoke privately.
South Korea, which has just handed the rotating presidency of the G20 to France, said on Friday that working-level meetings had already begun on food-price rises which have revived fears of a repeat of the 2008 food crisis.
The problem is moving up the political agenda in Asia, where China has recently sold corn, sugar, rice and other commodities out of state reserves to cool prices.
Some of the concrete ideas being considered for G20 talks include: obliging commodity investors to trade through exchanges rather than less transparent over-the-counter transactions and pressing for better sharing of data and crop forecasting.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon underlined the point when he recently told a conference in Paris one of France's top G20 priorities was to find a collective response to "excessive volatility" in commodity prices, notably for food and energy.
