Sept. 24, 2009 - Last summit in London was centered around the financial crisis and the best strategies to get the global economy out of recession. Although it is expected that the reform of international financial institutions will still be an important part of the discussion in today Pittsburgh summit, some sentences in president Barack Obama address to the UN indicate that global warming will be part of the agenda.

According to sources in the White House, the US president will propose to his G20 partners a plan to eliminate subsidies on fossil fuels, in order to encourage the use of renewable energy and to fight against global warming.

Seven months after the financial earthquake that shook Wall Street, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, large U.S. banks begin to talk about profit growth and solid earnings for 2009.

Jaime Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is proud of the performance of his bank, and says that he can now return the 25,000 million dollars that he lent from the Treasury 6 months ago.

The worst of the post-Lehman panic seems to have passed, in view of some quarterly results, better than expected, for Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. The strategy of "close to zero" interest rates orchestrated by the Federal Reserve seems to begin to stabilize the credit, the key step to bolster the economic upturn.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - More U.S. consumers are falling behind on their mortgages, an indication that the housing market has yet to hit bottom, a top credit bureau executive told Reuters.

Dann Adams, president of U.S. Information Systems for Equifax Inc, reported that 7 percent of homeowners with mortgages were at least 30 days late on their loans in February, an increase of more than 50 percent from a year earlier.

He also said 39.8 percent of subprime borrowers were at least 30 days behind on their home mortgage loans, up 23.7 percent from last year.

"I'm trying to find optimism in these numbers, but I'm pretty hard pressed to do that," Adams said, despite a recent burst of relatively positive news that has fueled hope that the U.S. housing market has turned a corner.

Late last month the Commerce Department reported that sales of newly built U.S. single-family homes rose to a 337,000 annual pace in February, the highest in 10 months.

What Economic Crisis?

"Everyone is suffering," President Obama said in his speech to a joint session of Congress in late February. He was referring to the global financial and economic crisis, but he didn't have it exactly right. There are some people who are doing well: dollar-store owners, bankruptcy lawyers, gun manufacturers (sales are up!), short-sellers of stock, foreclosure experts, and so on. But some individuals who are doing well are doing really well. Here's a rundown of 10 of the financial crisis' biggest winners:

Exit Paulson, enter Geithner with the latest "no banker left behind plan" - aka whatever Wall Street wants, Wall Street gets. Yet, the reception was underwhelming. The Dow plummeted 382 points while investors took shelter in bonds and gold. AP reported that "the new bank rescue plan landed with a thud on Wall Street" as investors worried that no end to the crisis is in sight. Editorial and op-ed commentaries were near unanimously negative and some especially critical.

At a February 9 congressional briefing, lawmakers greeted Geithner with laughter and sarcasm, but most of it is just politics. Bailout opponent Brad Sherman (D, California) asked for details and a dollar amount, but instead got generalities about what he announced the next day - a plan to:

-- "clean up and strengthen the nation's banks;" in other words, spend hundreds of billions more to recapitalize insolvent ones;

-- create a Public - Private Investment Fund to shift toxic assets from them to the public;