Not all the finance ministers and central bankers stuck around for the traditional Nunavut feast on Saturday. The menu featured seal, some of it raw, caribou and musk-ox.

Finance Ministers and officials from the G7 countries, meeting in Canada yesterday, insisted there would be a “European” solution to the problems affecting Greece, Portugal and Spain and no need for an IMF rescue.

Looks like the G7 ministers are taking the old “in for a penny, in for a pound” attitude on stimulus but they appear to have gotten a wake up call from the crisis sparked by Greece.

The deficit is certainly the foremost policy debate in the US these days and it is clearly center-stage in the UK .

Flaherty says the G7 has already had preliminary discussions about the euro zone debt situation and says there are concerns about Greece, Reuters reports.

We never would have guessed…

Jim Flaherty, the Canadian Finance Minister and host of the Winter X Games, err I mean G7, says that rigid currencies (like the CNY, minister?) are an important issue on economic imbalances but they are mostly an issue for the G20. He also says there will be no communique after this meeting.

Reporters have got to be asking themselves who they pissed-off to get sent to Iqaluit in February to cover a G7 with no communique…

The individual G7 members are doing their off the record briefings with reporters ahead of this weekend’s G7 meeting, the so-called curtain-raiser, in journalism parlance. Here is a Reuters run-down of the US’s briefing.

Who’s idea was this anyway?

I can’t wait for the pictures of Trichet on a dogsled…

Canada says the site of the meeting will take the G7 back to its more informal roots. Like the Plaza Hotel and the Louvre, I guess.

Can’t say I was expecting much, if anything, anyways.

A Canadian finance official just briefed reporters on the upcoming G7 meeting in the arctic town of Iqaluit. Some discussion of exchange rates is expected, with FX adjustment within the G7 to be discussed as well as adjustments they expect from others.  Canada would like to see more adjustment from China, the official said.

There will be no communique after the February 4-5 meeting.

Communique of G7 finance ministers and central bank governors at the end of their meeting in Istanbul on Saturday.

“Excess volatility and disorderly movements in exchange rates have adverse implications for economic and financial stability. We continue to monitor exchange markets closely, and cooperate as appropriate.”

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