Back to Gideon RachmanI am sitting in a cavernous press centre in Pittsburgh at the G-20, watching television pictures on a big screen of anarchist demonstrators being tear-gassed in a suburb about four miles from here. Now I understand one of the reasons for putting the summit in Pittsburgh. You can throw an exclusion zone around the centre of the city, in a way that just isn’t possible in New York.
Obama has also chosen Pittsburgh for reasons of tact. It would just have been too much of a snub to the other 170-plus members of the UN General Assembly, if a select group of 20 nations had snuck off to hold a separate, exclusive meeting in another part of Manhattan. It would have been like one of those New York night clubs, where the hoi polloi are held back behind a rope, while the favoured few are waved through the VIP entrance.
Pittsburgh is also regarded as a showcase for post-industrial recovery. The city was decimated by the shrinkage of the steel industry. Half the population has moved away, as the jobs disappeared. Pittsburgh’s population, which was 676,000 in 1950, is now a little over 300,000. The city’s champion football team, the Steelers, are well supported all around the country because there are so many Pittsburghers in exile. However, these days, the local economy is regarded as a success story. New industries have sprung up in medical services, robotics and computing. The unemployment rate is “only” 7.7%, which is lower than the rest of the US. They should hand-out t-shirts at the summit, with the slogan - “You can survive globalisation”
As you might have gathered from reading the FT, one of the big issues at the summit is “rebalancing the global economy” - which, to put it crudely, means persuading the Chinese to spend more, so that the Americans can spend less. I know the Chinese savings rate is very high. But, to hear the debates in Pittsburgh, you might imagine that the Chinese are all still clad in Mao suits and crouched over their iron rice bowls.
That was certainly not how it felt to me when I was in Shanghai, a couple of weeks ago. One of my lasting memories was walking past a five-storey department store - open at 11pm - and dedicated solely to the sale of Barbie dolls, and Barbie accoutrements. Now if that’s not conspicuous consumption, I don’t know what it is.
This blog covers a variety of topics from US foreign policy to European politics and the Middle East - and whatever else happens to be in the news or catch my attention. I joined the FT as chief foreign affairs commentator in 2006, after a 15-year career at The Economist which included stints as a correspondent in Brussels, Bangkok and Washington. I write a weekly column on foreign affairs, which appears in the paper on Tuesdays. Occasionally my FT colleagues contribute posts to this blog.
Geoff Dyer is the FT's China bureau chief. He has been a correspondent in Shanghai and in Brazil and has also covered the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology industries from London.
Roula Khalaf is the FT's Middle East editor. She has worked for the FT since 1995, first as North Africa correspondent, then Middle East correspondent and most recently as Middle East editor. Before joining the FT, she was a staff writer for Forbes magazine in New York. 
James Blitz is the FT's defence and diplomatic editor. He has been the FT's political editor, based in London, and Rome bureau chief. James is a former Moscow bureau chief for the Sunday Times.
Alan Beattie is the FT's world trade editor. He has previously been economics leader writer and spent two years in Washington DC as chief US economics correspondent. Before joining the FT, Alan was an economist at the Bank of England. 
Victor Mallet is the FT's Madrid correspondent. He is a former Asia editor of the FT, and, in more than 20 years at the organisation, has also worked in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. In 1990 he escaped from Kuwait after being one of the few foreign correspondents there when Iraq invaded. 
Stefan Wagstyl is the FT's eastern Europe editor, co-ordinating coverage of the region. He has also been the FT's bureau chief in Tokyo and New Delhi.