11 Minutes to Save the World

From the Wall Street Journal:

Last week's G20 summit was President Obama's first true international summit and for the most part it was seen as a success.

The "official" business was conducted from 7:30 am to 3:30 pm on April 2nd.

Of that eight hours, or 480 minutes, the first 55 were devoted to arrivals. The next 90 minutes were spent on breakfast, according to the summit schedule. At the 150 minute mark the leaders got together for the all important "family photograph."

Finally, at 10:20 a.m., nearly three hours into the event, the plenary session was slated to start, all 160 minutes of it.

All told the schedule shows 260 minutes for the mechanics of getting the leaders in, feeding them and taking their pictures, and 220 minutes for plenary sessions to talk about the crisis.

If one assumes everybody gets the same amount of time to talk, that gives each of the 20 world leaders exactly 11 minutes of floor time. But there's a catch. There are actually 30 attendees listed on the conference schedule, including the leaders of organizations like the Association of South East Asian Nations, the Financial Stability Forum, the International Monetary Fund, and so on.

So, assuming the equal time rule applies, each leader really gets a little over 7 minutes to convince the others about whatever their plan is for stimulus spending, financial regulation, boosting the IMF, or a global currency.