The drumbeat of diminishing expectations has been so loud and so long it seems the G-20 conference might be considered a success if the delegates simply manage to avoid getting into fistfights. With that grim prospect, no surprise, there has been a parade of stories comparing the G-20 to the G-66, the nations of the spectacularly failed 1933 World Economic Conference in London.

The situation, the location, and the failure have made the comparisons inevitable. Then, King George V welcomed the delegates to the Geological Museum in South Kensington that June. Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald told them, “The economic life of the world has for years been suffering from a decline which has closed factories, limited employment, reduced standards of living, brought some states to the verge of bankruptcy...”

It's all too familiar.

In the United States, there was a new President with new policies. And there was a fundamental difference between what the U.S. and the European countries wanted. Franklin Roosevelt wanted to pursue expansionist economic policies at home and encourage others to do the same. The European governments wanted more financial regulation -- in the form of a return to the gold standard and fixed exchange rates, which would be deflationary.

Then, as now, the spirit of economic nationalism was growing. The British journalist Gareth Jones wrote, “There are spirits floating about this Conference, and the most influential of them are the millions of American farmers, workers and unemployed who believe that the war debts must be paid, that American must live for herself alone, and that tariffs must be kept high.”

The U.S. came late to World War I with men, but it came early with money -- loans to Britain and France. Before the Depression set in, there was a sort of triangular flow. The Americans wanted their war loans paid. The British and French wanted reparations from Germany to pay their debts. And the U.S. had been arranging new financing for the Germans that would allow them to pay the reparations.

The system had broken down with the economic collapse. Tariffs went up. Currencies went down to gain advantage. Only an integrated settlement of debts, tariffs and exchange rates would succeed.

Those farmers and workers would not let Franklin Roosevelt agree to reducing debts, and he would not agree on gold. He scuttled the conference with a telegram decrying the “specious fallacy” of a return to the gold standard.

Roosevelt had played along to see what might come of the conference. But his final decision should not have been a surprise. Three months earlier in his inaugural address, he said, “Our international relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first.”

This is where the analogies begin to break down. In the draft communique that has leaked out, there is plenty of economic pablum. It was always so.

But Barack Obama is not going to torpedo the G-20 conference.

It appears he'll agree to many of the financial regulatory reforms European nations want. There also seems to be agreement on a substantial increase in funding for the International Monetary Fund to help smaller and developing countries through the crisis. 

And while other countries may not accept the coordinated stimulus plan President Obama wants, there is a reasonable probability many will do it on their own anyway.

National leaders at international summits will agree to do what they think is right, within the limits of what the politics of their countries allow. That's all we can expect.

This London summit won't create a grand global bargain, but neither does it seem headed for total collapse: 2009 is not 1933, and the G-20 is not the G-66.