HONG KONG — The world's financial leaders are gathering in Washington this weekend for crucial annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Never has the world so needed leadership, imagination and creative thinking, yet never has it been so lacking, with leaders sticking their heads in the ground like ostriches or, worse, trying to export their way to economic growth, a game in which there can be few winners.

The delicately balanced scenario that confronts the financial leaders is a world economy that is growing again, barely, but in difficult and potentially dangerous ways. In the developed countries a near-jobless recovery is under way, with the potential to undermine the fast growth in developing countries, especially China and India, and the hopeful prospects emerging from Africa.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, aka DSK, the managing director of the IMF, has put on a cautiously optimistic face, saying he does not expect a double-dip recession, even in the United States, but he warned of the need to create more jobs, saying "The Great Recession has left behind a wasteland of unemployment."