French President Jacques Chirac is urging world leaders to deliver a morale-boosting message on the world economy at a G8 summit in Evian, a tall order when many of them are on recession alert and the dollar is in a tailspin.
He is right to try, but no stunning initiatives are expected when the eight men whose countries produce half the planet's economic output meet between tomorrow and Tuesday in the French Alpine spa town of Evian, people with inside experience of such gatherings say.
Even a reconciliatory handshake in public between Mr Chirac and US President George W. Bush could help restore business, consumer and investor confidence after the rift over the war in Iraq that France opposed. Failure to do so could spook everyone.
"This is their first meeting since the war in Iraq. Evian is a critical moment in restoring the multilateral process," Fred Bergsten, who served as a deputy US Treasury Secretary under President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s, told Reuters.
"If these guys go to Evian and cannot show their ability to cooperate, it will be very damaging politically and economically and there would be severe damage in financial markets. It's also a question of confidence," Mr Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics, a Washington think-tank, said.
Lael Brainard, who worked as a G8 envoy for US President Bill Clinton, said grand plans for collective action on economic policy were out of fashion for now, but that leaders needed to keep the psychology positive and pull their weight for the sake of long-term growth, stability and Third World development.
"It's been a bad year for most of them. But the G8 has to and must be seen to be doing something about it," said Mr Brainard, who now works on foreign and economic policy at the Brookings Institution think-tank in Washington.
That is a far cry from the famous deals the world's leading economies struck at the Plaza hotel in New York in 1985 to push the dollar lower, and the Louvre accord in Paris two years later to prop it up again, or the collective intervention that took place to support the euro before a Prague meeting in 2000.
Mr Bergsten and Mr Brainard both said Evian was likely to produce renewed commitments to follow through on economic reforms such as overhauls of the pension systems in France and Germany and cutting excessive loan exposure at banks in Japan.
Mr Chirac spokeswoman Catherine Colonna said as much herself on Wednesday in a briefing with journalists, adding that there was a belief in G8 capitals that recovery is just round the corner now that oil prices are more reasonable and interest rates low.
France has kept its head above water with marginal economic growth in the first few months of this year but other G8 economies including Germany and Italy shrank, leaving them on the brink of recession. Japan, in and out of recession for a decade, had yet another flat quarter.
Britain, Canada and the United States have done a bit better but are suffering from a global downturn that set in 2000 and was supposed to lift long ago. Russia, a recent addition to the club, has enjoyed higher growth rates but is seen as less solid.
The dollar's slide against the euro - of around 15 per cent this year alone - has compounded the woes of the world's main finance chiefs and central bankers. Politicians, economists and businessmen are trying to establish to what extent the US administration is happy to see the dollar falling due to the helping hand that gives to exports and growth.
Germany, where there are mounting fears of deflation, is one of the European countries hurt hardest by the dollar's fall and the relative rise this triggers in the cost of exports from the euro zone to countries and homes that use the dollar.
In Berlin, officials have spoken out in the past few days to play down concern and deny that the G8 leaders would even consider broaching the subject in Evian.
But others, including International Monetary Fund chief Horst Koehler, say the issue will have to be tackled by central banks and finance ministries if the slide continues.
"It's not necessarily about deliberately trying to hurt the Europeans but the United States wants to stimulate growth and the rest takes second place," said Frederique Sachwald, an economics expert at the French Institute of International Relations.
Bernard Godemont, an economist at Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs, was even harsher about the cost that ignoring the currency problems could incur for Germany.
"With exchange rate levels like that Germany is in recession and Germany is going to stay there. Europe's biggest economy is condemned to fade into insignificance," he said. "Structural reform is all very well but it also takes a long time."