China is an irritant?

President Obama, of course, didn't say so, but somebody might want to paraphrase it instead to hint Obama's inner reflection.

U.S. President Barack Obama took aim at China as the Group of 20 summit ended Friday, calling its undervalued currency "an irritant."

The president, speaking at a news conference in Seoul, suggested China bears much of the blame for global trade imbalances, The New York Times reported. He abandoned his usual cautious language on the subject and said China and other countries should not assume "their path to prosperity is paved simply with exports to the United States."

"Precisely because of China's success, it's very important that it act in a responsible fashion internationally," Obama said. "And the issue of the renminbi is one that is an irritant not just to the United States, but is an irritant to a lot of China's trading partners and those who are competing with China to sell goods around the world."

At the G20, Obama and other leaders agreed to pass along checks and balances of international trade to the International Monetary Fund to study.

The leaders asked the IMF to find "indicative guidelines composed of a range of indicators" that would "serve as a mechanism to facilitate timely identification of large imbalances that require preventative and corrective actions be taken," The Wall Street Journal reported.

The final agreement said countries with "overvalued flexible exchange rates" would be permitted to take "carefully designed macro-prudential measures."

But leaders clearly balked at putting teeth in the communique that would measure or correct trade imbalances this year.

"The idea is not to stall on solutions that would be put on the table too early," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who will chair the next G20 summit next year.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, "I think we've got everyone talking the same language, everyone understanding longer term what has to be done."

It's a very harsh word for a Nobel Peace Award winner. Nonetheless, it's not difficult to see that his irritation is coming from a declining support for the administration, which has just been demonstrated as a historical defeat in a mid-term election.

In spite of a lot of speculations beforehand like "the new Plaza Accord", the G20 meeting in Korea didn't cut any policy or agreement but for a mundane communique, presenting us how deeply the world is divided on the currency issues.

Anyway, I'm very much interested in a following blog post by Los Angels Times, which should be a concluding remark for the G20.

Seems like the country has been enjoying a little vacation from President Obama during his month-long trip to Asia the last eight days.

He'll be back home Sunday, talking up more storms. But today he was back briefly, if only from South Korea.

The G-20 summit of world leaders that concluded today in Seoul, South Korea, was so productive in the area of economic solutions that at his departure news conference (full text below, as usual), the first thing President Obama chose to talk about was Iraq.

He wanted to call attention to yet another "milestone" over there, the not-really-quite-completed-but-we're-really-still-making-progress-in-months-long-negotiations on yet.... ...another national government. It seems like over all these years we've passed so many important "milestones" there that we ought to be reaching a destination pretty soon. Even if they do use kilometer stones.

Anyway, talking about Iraq again about sums up the value of the Seoul summit.