Alden J. McDonald Jr., Chief Executive Officer, Liberty Bank

Todd O. McDonald, President, Liberty Bank

In the fall of 1968, 57 years ago, cities across the nation were still smoldering from the fiery riots that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Some cities never fully recovered.

Despite his life’s work for peace, civil rights, racial equity, and justice for all, it was in Dr. King’s final speech — the night before the April 4, 1968 assassination — that he spoke passionately and pointedly on the economic importance of supporting Black-owned businesses. This included Black-owned banks.

“We want a bank-in movement in Memphis,” Dr. King told the cheering crowd in what is called the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech at the Mason Temple Church of God in Christ. “We’ve got to strengthen Black institutions,” he said as he encouraged people to redirect their money to support Black banks and other Black-owned businesses.

Decades later, leaders of Black-owned banks say this wise economic movement that never fully came to fruition is still necessary. To support Black banks means to support Black home-ownership, Black business-development, Black neighborhoods, Black families, and the future of Black America, says Alden J. McDonald Jr., chief executive officer of the New Orleans-based Liberty Bank, the largest Black-owned bank in America with holdings surpassing a billion dollars. His son, Todd McDonald, Liberty’s president and chairman of the National Bankers Association, agrees.

At the helm of the 53-year-old institution, with eyes on the future, they both recently sat down to discuss the legacy of Liberty Bank, where Black America must economically go from here, and how Liberty is working to double its deposits from one billion to more than two billion dollars.

Given the economic struggles of Black people and the ebbs and flows of America’s overall economy, how has Liberty Bank amassed more than a billion dollars in deposits? 

Alden McDonald: The history of Liberty started in 1972, more than a half century ago. And it started with a concept of having a multi-racial bank to attract business from all parts of the community. As time went on, it became an African-American-owned bank because our mission was to serve the underserved community and we wanted to find different ways of helping people to close the wealth gap and to create equity.   So, through the years, we sort of got into a niche and a passion for mortgage loans because we felt homeownership was very important. Homeownership and small business lending was a key to growing the community economically; thereby growing the holdings of our bank.

What is your strategy for serving Black consumers when many other banks have red-lined Black neighborhoods and even discriminate against us and avoid dealing with us?

Alden McDonald: Black consumers represent a market niche. I came up with a poor family. So, we understood the challenges that the community had from day to day. So, when we built a company, the company was built on what we knew. And knowing the challenges of the community helped us in a lot of different ways of finding a way to serve the community, and a way to serve the community to make a profit because you have to make a profit in order to be sustaining. So, we understood the challenges of how to lend to the community.  

As a former board chair of the National Bankers Association, the FDIC and other national banking and financial institutions reach out to you for wisdom. Why do they come to you and how do you advise these prestigious institutions on how to deal with Black communities?

Alden McDonald: They’re looking for board members who can add value to their business and help them grow. FDIC, for example, is in the business of managing banks. So, obviously they look for bank talent where they can get feedback and help to design policy. So, all of the boards I sit on, or used to sit on, I like to feel that they were interested in what I could add as far as value is concerned to their entity. And so, you have to know the people you’re lending to in order to be good at it. So, while we live in the community that we serve and we also live in other communities, we have an edge on how to lend and how to do business in the community at large. 

It has been reported that churches sometimes have difficulty repaying loans. How does the Black bank deal with the faith community and houses of worship when something like this happens?

Alden McDonald: We have the largest portfolio of Black church loans than any bank in the country. Churches are not exempt from paying their debts. And so, we deal with it from a business perspective. They owe the debt. We deal with them like we deal with everybody else. They’ve got to pay it. It’s real simple. And that’s the way we handle all of our creditors. We’re not a social organization. We’re a business. 

What can the community do to strengthen Black banks?

Alden McDonald: Part of our marketing is that when you deposit money in Liberty, you help the community grow because we need deposits in our banks in order to lend out to borrowers.

Our borrowers, many of them — if not a huge majority — are from the urban communities or Black people. So, when you help us grow by making deposits with us, we then can lend…And so more of your deposits with us are used to build the community in which you live and help create jobs.

Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana in the summer of 2005, the year that Liberty found itself in the midst of crisis. How did you get through that and back on your feet?

Alden McDonald: We always say wherever there’s an obstacle, there’s an opportunity. So, Hurricane Katrina was an obstacle for us. We’d lost all of our records. We’d lost all of our employees; 70% of our customer base had to relocate. We had to rebuild a company, rebuild a business in a very short period of time in order to survive. It took us a couple of years to sort of get everything back and rolling again. But we did it through hard work, our staff, and friends.  

Did other major banks help?

Alden McDonald: No. The banks in our community helped us. The community itself helped us a lot because it had a good understanding that we were helping the community grow again. They needed loans. And so, we were still able to make loans. We just had to get our infrastructure back in place. We still had a lot of deposits from different people. And so, it was just building a bank again.

Your son, Todd McDonald, is now president of Liberty Bank and chairman of the National Bankers Association. How did you pass that passion, that knowledge, and that mantle along to your son?

Alden McDonald: In any business, you have to have a succession plan. My son worked for 20-plus years for the bank. And so, in succession planning, you begin to build individuals to succeed everyone. And he learned the business from bottom up and did a pretty good job at it. And he thought he was capable of taking it to the next level. For example, he told me, “It took you 50 years to get to a billion. It’s not going to take me 50 years to get to the second billion. I’m going to get to the second billion within five years.” I said, “Okay. Go for it.” And so, he earned it to begin with. He went through the same process that we would go through for anybody being a part of the succession plan. It just so happens that he was my son.

How did you come to follow in your father’s footsteps?

Todd McDonald: I was around banking all my life. I’ve been with the bank for more than 22 years. I always knew what my Dad did. But initially, I didn’t really appreciate what he did. I knew he would go to work. He would stay late. He would travel a lot. But then when I graduated from Morehouse College and started spending more time at the bank, that was my first time being a full-time employee. And so, I started realizing, you know, the impact that the bank and that he and all of the bank’s leaders had on the communities that we serve. And so, that was cool.

You’ve told your father that you will bring in another billion dollars. How will you bring in the second billion when other Black banks are still struggling?

Todd McDonald: Typically, we’ve grown through acquisition. So we’ve actually purchased 12 banks over the history of Liberty. So that’s one way to do it. But the second way is to expand geographically. When you expand geographically, you have new states, you have new cities and municipalities, you have new school systems where you can attract the deposits. And so, typically, when you go after deposits, most of those entities want you to have a physical footprint. And so, when you start to expand geographically with physical locations, that should organically start to build up deposits. So, the lending arm will come next. We’re physically in 11 states right now. So that’s kind of the most traditional way to do it.

What can you teach other Black-owned banks about survival and growth?

Todd McDonald: Coming out of several downturns and several disasters over the history of Liberty Bank, we’ve learned how to adjust. Like the first downturn banking experienced was probably in the 80s with the Louisiana oil bust when 60% of banks in Louisiana failed, closed, or sold. And that was a trying time for Liberty as well. And they had to kind of double down on the areas of banking that were not being paid attention to. And they had to adjust and write off a lot of loans. But then they had to make more loans to offset the write-offs. That was kind of their first experience. And then we tried some new things in the 90s that made us kind of readjust our business model. So, again a deflection point, it almost seems like every 10 years.

After that, we lost everything in 2005 — essentially everything to Hurricane Katrina. So, we had to adopt new technology because at that point a lot of our clients had moved to Houston and Atlanta. And so, we took on a lot of new technology to do online banking. And so, again, that was another pivot. That was another disaster or change in the sector that forced us to evolve.

And then you look at the economic downturn of 2008 and 2010. You had a lot of banks that closed. And so, when the banks closed, we purchased them. So that was another pivot. And then we had COVID where everything kind of went out the window; where banks didn’t really know what to do because everyone had stopped receiving income as a business or were laid off. So, then we had to really expedite adoption of technology. So, we adopted the technology that was at our fingertips, but we also adopted new technology. We did a lot of that to expedite those changes. And so, banking is constantly evolving. I guess the secret sauce is to remain committed to banking, committed to our community; and committed to our team members at the bank.

How are the millennials and other younger generations doing? Are they doing business with Black-owned banks?

Todd McDonald: It’s difficult. You have a lot of people in my generation using different technology instead of traditional banks. They use fintech (financial technology) and apps instead of banking in the movement of money. The key to understanding the fintech space is that fintech mechanisms are not banks. They’re just kind of conduits of transaction flow. But they have to have banks behind them. They have to allow banks to transact with each other. And so, while they’re not opening checking accounts like their parents did, they’re opening profiles and the traditional banking network is behind the scenes.

So how do we deal with the check-cashing and the payday lending places that show up in our community? How can we make sure that people know and are educated to the fact that these are not actual banks?

Todd McDonald: That’s something that I’m very passionate about. When you look at people who are paying 500-600% interest rates on emergency loans; that pulls out a lot of cash flow from our communities immediately. A bank like Liberty could refinance that person out of that 500 to 600% interest loan to put them into a more competitive market rate loan. It would automatically save them hundreds of dollars per month. And it puts the money back into their pockets.

As chair of the National Bankers Association, what is the goal for Black banks?

Todd McDonald: The goal is definitely growth. There are a total of 23 Black banks now. But back in the 90s, there were more than a hundred. So, there’s been a ton of contractions in the marketplace. But, the National Bankers Association is not only made up of Black-owned banks; it’s also Asian-owned, Hispanic-owned, Native American-owned, and women-owned that make up membership.

There are 150 Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs) in the country. And there are 4,600 banks in the U. S. alone. So, look at 150 compared to 4600 (3.2%). That’s a very small number. So, how do we grow that base? Let’s say that if the Black-owned banks collectively had $10 billion and the Asian banks had $300 billion collectively, how do we get the Black-owned banks to start thinking at that level? We can. But we just historically have not supported one another.

What is the greatest obstacle to the growth of Black-owned banks?

Todd McDonald: I would say the biggest obstacle is our community not supporting ourselves. We’ve had the history. We’ve had the same products as a lot of our other institutions and for some reason we don’t support each other. I think that goes back to before I was born; before my parents were born. We do not have a sense of community when it comes to us for some reason. You look at the Jewish community; you look at the Hispanic community; you look at the Asian community. You look at all of these other banks, and they do business with themselves.

So, what is that attitude or mentality we will have to break in order to get people to take a second look at Black-owned banks and be intentional about it?

Todd McDonald: Just spreading the word and sharing why it’s important. A lot of people, for some reason a lot of our communities don’t understand that. It’s taken us this long to get to this point. And the playing field is not level.

What would be your dream if we would support one another as Dr. King said, what might we accomplish?

Todd McDonald: I think a very tangible dream is to get back the loans that are being done by the predatory lenders. When you look at the amount of money that has been sucked out of our communities, underserved communities, it’s billions of dollars. And so, I give this very simple example: One refinanced loan that saves a person $300 a month…Let’s just do that by a million people. That’s $300 million dollars per month – times 12. That’s billions of dollars annually.

Is it realistic to expect everyone in the community to switch over to a Black-owned bank?

Todd McDonald: I never tell anybody to just have one bank. Have multiple banks. But at least have an account with one of us because your deposit is going to help us make a loan to somebody that would have gone to a 600% interest rate facility rather than coming to us at a market rate. So, can we all just come into a room and pull out our debit cards with a Black-owned bank? That would be amazing. And it’s not unrealistic. And that would be the dream.

This article, written by Hazel Trice Edney, was first published by Black Enterprise Magazine.

Dec. 8, 2025

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The headlines this month about white men, college admissions, and the fallout from ending affirmative action startled a lot of people. Stories of declining enrollment and shrinking opportunity for young white men were treated as if they had materialized out of nowhere.

Many found it surprising.

I didn’t.

It reminded me of a conversation I had a little over a decade ago on a Delta Airlines flight from Atlanta to Memphis—one of those brief moments in transit that stays with you because it tells the truth long before the data catches up.

A white man in a bright red shirt with a Confederate flag over his heart sat down next to me. He stuck out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Bill.” As he introduced himself, I looked more closely at his shirt and realized that under the flag it said “Ole Miss Football.” It was a booster shirt. We chatted. He asked what I did. I told him I led the NAACP. He blinked, then leaned in with a sincerity I recognized.

“Ben,” he asked, “what’s the purpose of affirmative action?”

I told him the truth: its purpose is to help dismantle nepotism as the operating system of this country.

He slapped his knee. “Sign me up for that. But tell me this—what good does that do for the boys in my family?”

Then he told me what he meant. The men in his family had been, as he put it, “in and out of prison since we came here on the wrong side of the Georgia penal colony.” He was the lone exception—a gifted high school football player who earned a scholarship to Ole Miss. A coach introduced him to business leaders in Memphis. That was his way out. The booster shirt wasn’t a provocation. It was a keepsake from the only open door his family ever had.

Bill’s story is not the one America tells about white men. But it is the story millions are living. And it mirrors something larger happening across this country.

For years now, researchers have documented serious headwinds facing working-class American men: wages that stagnate or fall, especially for men without college degrees; fewer men in college even as women’s enrollment rises; more men detached from the labor force; rising suicide and overdose deaths in many hard-hit communities; and marriage becoming less common and less stable for men with the weakest economic prospects.

White working-class men feel this acutely. But they are not alone.

White men may have made the headlines, but similar trends are affecting Black, Latino, Native, and Asian men—especially those from poor and working-class backgrounds. In today’s economy, class and education now do as much work as race in deciding whether a man will be seen as “marriageable,” employable, and likely to climb beyond the station of his birth.

So if you’re wondering why a Black civil rights leader cares about the struggles of white men, the answer is simple: In a democracy, you cannot fix poverty for anyone unless you fix it for everyone. Every major leap forward in opportunity in this country has depended on multiracial coalitions. Progress comes when we face the full truth—not when we ignore parts of it.

Which brings us to the conversation we are actually having.

Or rather, not having.

It’s time to readjust our thinking about white men, college admissions, and DEI. The left and the right have both turned this into a culture war when what we really need is a reality check.

On the right, the headlines became a grievance weapon—proof, some claim, that diversity efforts were out to “replace” white men. On the left, the reaction was defensive, as if acknowledging hardship among white families would somehow undermine the fight for racial justice.

Neither response had much to do with the truth.

And if we’re wondering why we can’t seem to have a real conversation about opportunity, we should start where political scientist Martin Gilens warned us decades ago. By portraying poverty disproportionately with Black faces, American media helped make the white poor—and much of the working class—invisible. That distortion robbed us of the ability to see the full picture of suffering and the full map of shared struggle.

When entire communities are invisible, their pain doesn’t get counted. Their boys don’t get counted. Their decline doesn’t make the front page until it shows up as a political shock.

That invisibility hurts everyone.

It hurts white families like Bill’s.

It hurts Black and brown families navigating the same broken ladders.

It hurts the communities trying to build stable futures for their children.

Before we talk solutions, we need full visibility—a willingness to see all who are struggling, not just the ones who fit our old narratives.

And yes, part of that conversation may involve something like affirmative action for working-class families—including white men. Not the caricatured version people argue about on cable news, but the real kind colleges have long used: giving a boost to students from low-income families, high-poverty neighborhoods, under-resourced schools, and overlooked rural counties—from Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta to remote parts of Alaska. Race-based affirmative action sat alongside these class- and place-based efforts; it never replaced them. And even after the Supreme Court’s decision, colleges can still use class-based affirmative action because it recognizes a basic truth: A child’s chances in life are shaped powerfully by zip code, wealth, and opportunity.

The headlines surprised many because they showed only one part of the story. It’s time we tell the whole one. Only then can we rebuild opportunity—for Bill, for the boys in his family, and for every family fighting for a fair shot.

Ben Jealous is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and a former national president and CEO of the NAACP. His latest book is Never Forget Our People Were Always Free.

New Generation of Black Church Leadership Rising to Continue Battle for Freedom

Installation of Pastor Kevin Lamár Peterman at Historic DC Church Indicates Next Power Move for Social Justice in America

By Hazel Trice Edney

Pastor Peterman, on front row (center) in suit and tie, stands in front of Nineteenth Street Baptist Church, surrounded by guest clergy who attended to support and celebrate.

Pastor Peterman speaks to the congregation after being robed by his mother, Mrs. Donna Holley-Nelms.

Pastor Peterman receives laying on of hands and prayer by attending clergy during the installation service.

Pastor Kevin Lamár Peterman

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - It was on Nov. 24, 2014, when then Howard University student Kevin Lamár Peterman first felt a sermon rise from his belly.

That was the same day that a grand jury decided not to indict a white Ferguson, Missouri police officer, Darren Wilson, in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Mike Brown, an unarmed Black teenager walking down the street in his neighborhood. It was a police killing that sparked historic protests across America; including fiery demonstrations in Ferguson that were met with military force.

Having returned from the uprisings in Ferguson, Peterman was leading a community and student protest on the steps of Howard’s Douglass Hall when the announcement came that Wilson would not be indicted.

“I remember giving a speech that night that I felt turn into a sermon. And it was really social justice that led me to ministry,” Peterman said in a recent interview. “I felt that the best way to advance the cause of Black people in America was through the church and through education. And so that’s kind of how my ministry began.”

A little more than 10 years later, the stirring that Peterman felt that night has now come full circle. On Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025, at the age of 32, he was installed pastor of the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church, the oldest and most historic Black Baptist congregation in Washington, DC, dating back through enslavement more than 180 years.

Today, as issues of racial justice continue to simmer – and grow - across the nation, the pastoral installation of Peterman and other young men and women in his age group is being viewed as a resurgence of sorts, part of a spiritual uprising of a new generation of civil rights leadership in the Black church.

“What you’re seeing is that there are a number of young Black preachers who are taking over historic Black churches in historic cities, who are doing this work of social justice and also doing the work of social impact while also preaching salvation,” Peterman said. “Every generation of ministers is called to move the thermometer one notch, one pace forward. It’s like a race. The baton has been passed to the next generation to run our leg of the race.”

Among those who have risen to church leadership from coast to coast – during what Peterman describes as the “Black Lives Matter” era is Melech Thomas, who led protests alongside him after the Baltimore police custody death of Freddie Gray. Thomas was installed pastor of Baltimore’s Payne Memorial AME Church earlier this year.

Also, the Rev. Devon Jerome Crawford, pastor of the Third Baptist church in San Francisco, the home church of former Vice President Kamala Harris; the Rev. Art Gordon is pastor of the oldest Black Baptist church in New England, the People’s Baptist church in Boston; the Rev. Malcolm J. Byrd is senior pastor of the Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the oldest Black Church in New York State, founded in 1796; the Rev. Marissa Farrow has been named senior pastor-elect of Baltimore’s Mt. Calvary Church & Ministries; and the Rev. Rodney Carter is pastor of the Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church, the largest Pentecostal congregation in D.C.

“So, you’re seeing a new generation of pastors coming into the pulpit and taking over historic churches and many of us are trying to do the work that was being done 60 years ago, prior to the civil rights movement,” Peterman says. “It’s not a new vision. It’s a continuum. And hopefully, when we die, life in America will be better than it was when we were born.”

Therefore, during the services surrounding Peterman’s installation, it was made clear that his generation will not carry the mantle alone. As they rise to leadership, they join their mentors, their fathers and mothers in ministry who remain alongside them in the preaching of salvation, the battle for social justice, and the sharing of wisdom and experience.

The three services celebrating Peterman as the new pastor included preachers, known nationally for their leadership. Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley, senior pastor of the historic Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va, preached a one-night revival. The installation service was led by Rev. Lawrence E. Aker, III, lead pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York; and the events were culminated during a Sunday service preached by the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, senior pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Peterman served as a pastoral intern.

Aker, the pastor who ordained Peterman at Cornerstone, where he served as young adult and social justice minister, preached from the scripture, II Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” The title of the message was “A Divine Assignment.”

Peterman listened intently, preparing to be ceremoniously robed by his mother, Mrs. Donna Holley-Nelms. He recounted that he was raised by a “single parent mother and grandmother in Vauxhall, New Jersey with the church as the center of our life.”

Essentially, Aker elaborated that Peterman has been called to preach in a time that has been described as the “fourth industrial revolution,” which, in part, means the world’s rise to 21st century technology; including AI, (artificial intelligence) and that the multi-generational Black church must not be afraid.

Greater Mount Calvary Pastor Rodney Carter, 34, gave a charge to the congregation that appeared strongly in agreement with Aker. “There are some who are going to grieve the past. I want to encourage you to follow the vision. Don’t fight the vessel,” Carter said.

Aker’s message likely heartened Peterman, who, in the pre-installation interview, expressed that the Black church must use maximum technology and social media in order to communicate its Gospel and social justice messages.

“We have to communicate our story. We have to communicate the work that we’re doing at Nineteenth Street. We have to embrace technology one hundred percent. We have to communicate what we’re doing and the work that we’re doing in 21^st century ways. Social media for us has been on the back burner,” Peterman said. “The reality is that nobody is looking for or most people under the age of 50 are not looking for something to come in the mail to them. Most people now under the age of 70 want to be online, want to be digitized, want it to be on their phone. We have to embrace multiple platforms. I want people to know that I’m on a mission. I’m on a mission for God. And I am on a mission for my people.”

The fact that Nineteenth Street Baptist is located in the heart of the nation’s capital, is crucial to his national leadership in social justice, Peterman said.

“As goes Washington goes the rest of the country. The country is always looking to Washington, DC for leadership in every industry and in every sector. The same for the church,” he said. “I think the churches across the country are going to be asking the question, 'What are the churches in the nation’s capital doing to advance the efforts of marginalized people, of Black people, of Brown people?’ So that will be an example for churches throughout the rest of the country.

He concludes, “We particularly have a great opportunity because we eat at the same restaurants where the lawmakers eat. We are literally in proximity of and can go to the Supreme Court and demonstrate and make our voices known in ways that a congregation in Kentucky or Los Angeles or in Houston or Chicago cannot easily do. So, for us, our proximity to power comes with great responsibility and a privileged burden. Our proximity to power comes with a responsibility to speak truth to power on behalf of everybody else as loud as we can speak it.”

To Be Equal 
Dec. 30, 2025

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “Trump’s reasons for boycotting the event are ridiculous, to be polite … The claim that white people are more affected by criminal acts in the country is not only a mistaken belief but also a manufactured lie designed to invoke the emotions of white racists across the globe. The argument that black economic empowerment, affirmative action and other transformative laws are racist is simply an attempt to protect the privilege of white people.” – Sowetan editor Sibongakonke Shoba
 
Traditionally, each meeting of the Group of Twenty, more commonly known as the G20, ends with the leader of the host country ceremonially handing the gavel to the leader of the next year’s host country.

Not this year.

The United States absence was not just symbolic. In boycotting the summit, the Trump administration has chosen to relinquish our nation’s leadership on global economic and social policy, preferring instead to promote discredited conspiracy theories rooted in racial prejudice.

The boycott is part of an ongoing diplomatic attack on South Africa dating back to Trump’s first term, when he began disseminating baseless claims of widespread killing of white South African farmers and land seizures.  The administration has used these lies as a pretext to withdraw financial assistance to South Africa, to give white South Africans priority for refugee status in the U.S., and to boycott the G20 summit that just concluded.

Trump’s confrontation of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with misleading and mislabeled racist propaganda in the Oval Office in May was embarrassing.  The consequences of the boycott will be far more damaging.  As the United States surrenders its role in shaping the global economic future, the vacuum will be filled by nations like China and Russia who are only too happy to see our status and influence diminished.

Africa, home to some of the fastest-growing economies in the world, is increasingly central to global growth. Conversations about trade, technology, and climate change rely on these young, dynamic voices and the United States has a responsibility and shared interest in being a part of these conversations.

The Trump administration has clung to the mantra of “America first.” But boycotting the G20 is “America sidelined.”  In presenting a false choice between domestic and global concerns, the administration betrays its failure to grasp how the two are intertwined. American jobs depend on trade deals that were negotiated without our input. Our public health depends on agreements forged in our absence.

America cannot lead if we don’t show up. We cannot be a beacon of truth while spreading lies. We cannot promote American ideals if we abdicate our leadership to nations that are hostile to our goals. Walking away from the G20 was an epic failure of leadership. Continuing down this path would be an even greater one.