The crisis and the calendar will come together at the Group of 20 meeting in London on April 2, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown hosts Obama and the rest of the Group of Seven leaders, along with the leaders of Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Mexico and others.

This is the follow-up to the rather disappointing G20 summit in Washington on Nov. 25, which suffered from Obama's absence. As well as Obama's first encounter with his fellow leaders on the world stage, next year's meeting will establish how far the world can expect a coordinated global response to the crisis. So far, there has been good coordination on bailing out the stricken banking system but a much less effective attempt to coordinate stimulus and fiscal packages. Apart from the mood music of Obama's debut and the rhetoric of the final communique, the success of this summit will be defined by a number of different factors.

One of the most important will be the emergence of any new commitment to smooth the path of global trade and reduce agricultural subsidies. Another will be the re-capitalization of the International Monetary Fund so that it can bail out the hard-hit emergent markets from their current account crises.

There also should be a firm commitment to rebuild world grain stocks from their current lows. After soaring food prices in 2008 led South American farmers to overextend, the financial crisis has seen major bankruptcies and repossessions in Brazil and Argentina, and there are fears of 30 percent-plus falls in soy and wheat production. This could send world prices soaring again next year.

Perhaps the crucial question will be whether the world's surplus economies -- notably China, Japan, Germany and the major oil exporters -- agree to mobilize their financial reserves to expand their domestic consumption. Nominally, the world already has met the target of a fiscal stimulus of 2 percent of global GDP proposed by IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard. Indeed, nominally there is a commitment of almost $2 trillion, but 80 percent of the new money in that total comes from Obama's U.S. plan alone. So one key question is whether the G20 can let the IMF keep score of stimulus packages and declare publicly how far they are real and involve new money, and name and shame the backsliders.

Immediately after the G20 summit comes the 60th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an event that Obama will have to attend and which probably will define for the rest of his presidency the relations he is to enjoy or to suffer with an aggrieved Russia. Obama needs no new headaches, so he is unlikely to stake much on any firm new commitment of early NATO membership to Ukraine or Georgia. Most of the Europeans are dubious about this, even though Russia has been financially weakened and its ambitions curtailed by the fall in the oil price.

The next event on the calendar is the midsummer Group of Eight summit in Italy, hosted by the mercurial Silvio Berlusconi. The economic crisis is likely to dominate the agenda, along with its effect on emergent markets, and it is likely that the G8 by this time will have become a much larger grouping.

But the whole of this calendar can be thrown out and Obama's agenda transformed by chance. The Middle East can always be guaranteed to throw up some unpleasant surprises, like Israel's weekend air strikes on Gaza, or the restoration to power in March of Bibi Netanyahu as Israel's premier. This is likely to make progress with the Palestinians even harder to achieve and also could raise the prospects of military action against Iran, just as Obama is trying his first steps at crisis diplomacy.

The Afghan war and the great question of Pakistan's role against the Taliban and the associated tensions between the nuclear powers of India and Pakistan are likely to dominate much of Obama's foreign policy next year. A dramatic new terrorist attack against India, or against Pakistan's civilian government, could pitch the region into a desperate crisis almost overnight.

The rest of the world also can be expected to produce a series of distracting headaches, and, as the first African-American president, Obama is likely to face some urgent demands in Africa, from the nightmarish collapse of Zimbabwe to the wars of the Great Lakes region to the ongoing hell of Darfur and the new challenge of Somalia.

North Korea, Tibet and Myanmar will retain their capacity to surprise, as will the long, slow death of the Castro brothers' regime in Cuba. Obama can expect to have to deal with the inevitable financial crisis of Venezuela under the spendthrift and capricious autocracy of Hugo Chavez, and the equally inevitable financial crisis of Argentina.

Dominating everything, and also limiting Obama's ability to shape events, will be the slow, unhappy drift of the world from financial recession into global depression. The leaders of new great powers like China and India and Brazil have lost their self-confidence and face new domestic problems from the slowing of world growth and the collapse of their export markets.

They, like everyone else, will be turning to the new American president with a mixture of hope for intelligent leadership and wariness about American intentions. They also will be afflicted by a deep nervousness about a global economy that long has been defined by American finance, American technology and American markets.

Ready or not, experienced or not, these will be Obama's problems, as he assumes the leadership of the one country that still matters more, can achieve more and also can ruin more than any other nation on earth.

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