THE loose organization of G7 originally emerged in the early 1970s as a somewhat informal gathering of the finance ministers from the United States, West Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. As the energy crisis of that decade was spooling up, U.S. Treasury Secretary George Shultz decided it would be wise to coordinate macroeconomic initiatives with other larger players on the world stage. Subsequently, nations such as Japan, Italy, and Canada were brought into the group. When the European Union became a prominent coordinator for the European common market in the late 70s, the president of the European Commission was also invited to participate. And in 1998, the recently devolved Russia (expelled in 2014) was invited to the table, although mostly in a political sense since the country continued to lag behind the other participants economically. The power of the G7 has bred controversy. In 1985, major meddling in international currency markets culminating in the Plaza Accord made it clear that the group needed to be more forthright in briefing other worldwide economic interests with respect to their decisions. Meetings have subsequently been announced and some sense of the agenda floated to prepare global markets for possible changes in macroeconomic policy. The major summit involving world leaders is still held annually at a site that rotates through the member nations. The group finance ministers, however, may meet more frequently throughout the year depending on the subjects on their plate and global economic conditions. The group started a tradition of inviting other international organizations to the summits in the late 1990s, a list that has included: International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United Nations, World Trade Organization, African Union, and International Energy Agency. Other nations have also been invited to participate from time to time. (SD-Agencies) | 