The annual get-together of the leaders of the world's richest nations was born out of the economic meltdown of the 1970s, writes Larry Elliott, but it has been a long time since the G8 summit was dominated by the problems of unemployment, inflation and growth.
This year has been no exception. Africa and climate change have been at the top of the agenda, with the G8 spending far more time drawing up blueprints to help the world's poorest continent than they have on addressing some of the issues that threaten their own prosperity.
On the fringes of the summit, there have been some murmurings about the risks posed by oil prices at $60 a barrel, and George Bush has kept up the pressure on China to revalue its currency, but that's about it.
This seems mightily complacent. Every previous surge in oil prices in the past three decades has led to a global recession, and with Europe in the doldrums, the US up to its eyeballs in debt and Japan only just emerging from a 15-year-long recession, there is a chance that when the G8 meets in Russia a year from now, it may need to put the economics back in the World Economic Summit.
Larry Elliott is the Guardian's economics editor
