Pittsburgh's preparations for the G-20 summit are pretty much done -- the turkey is in the oven, as it were -- and by tomorrow we will be in it up to our ears.

After they go home, the event that State Department types celebrate traditionally as "wheels up," Pittsburghers, Americans and, in fact, the whole world will have the right to assess what was achieved here by the leaders during their romp on the banks of our rivers.

Following is the score card that should be applied, according to me:

1) Did they assure that what may be the world's recovery from the recession will continue? I am not convinced, as apparently are Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and most of the Wall Street and other chubby feline bankers and financiers, that it is over. I don't count what politicians say on that subject. They are financed by and allied with the bankers and are thus almost incapable of telling the truth on the subject.

What remains crystal clear is that America's and the world's unemployment rate remains unacceptably high and the global economy continues to create jobs at an anemic pace. Therefore the question will be: Did the G-20 summit affirm the need for governments and international financial institutions to continue to pour life-giving funds into the economy and to keep interest rates low, or did the leaders here decide that the bankers, the fat cats and they themselves seem to have survived the misfortunes of the recession and the devil take the unemployed and the poor still stretched out on the rack? Which was it?

2) What steps did the summit leaders take to try to assure that this doesn't happen again? America's bankers and investment house gang chiefs have swallowed the bailout money that the administrations of both presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have dished out to them and are lying in the sun contentedly like one of those giant pythons one sees on nature TV digesting the pig it just ate. Talk of regulation, or pay caps, or whatever constraint might be put on them to keep them from fouling the whole world's nest again is greeted by our financial movers and shakers and their congressional shills as damaging to their creative little souls and unlikely to work.

And it will have to be international to be effective, which means that it is a bullet that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the other summiteers will have to bite also if the measures are to work.

But if something isn't done, who would like to bet that America and the world won't find themselves in the soup again soon as a result of financiers' unfettered "creativity"? History is dotted with panics, slumps, recessions and depressions. In this day of amazing communications and relatively easily convoked summits, recurring economic train wrecks are definitely not necessary. And it is up to the likes of the intelligent, distinguished leaders who are here to see that they don't recur.

3) Other parts of that same puzzle include the need to find a new economic growth model, as free as possible of dangerous use of speculative instruments and not employing inflation to deal with debt. This problem is particularly poignant for a U.S. administration facing budget deficits in the trillions stretching as far as the eye can see. Inflation is easy for the rich to bear but ruinous to the less fortunate, whose wages and salaries are static or lag. So, what have they done about the future?

4) Have they pursued the discussions begun in New York yesterday designed to make the December climate change conference in Copenhagen meaningful in dealing with the global warming issue? For those who find that problem alarming, Copenhagen cannot be allowed to fail. At the same time, its prospects are not especially bright given that additional spending by governments will be required to slow or stop global warming. Green-oriented regulation will have to join financial body regulation across the world. Both can be seen as counterintuitive if another -- perhaps the principal -- global goal is restarting and stimulating a sluggish economy.

Maybe it can all be done. The retooling toward greenness will involve change and new investment that could carry the world into a brighter future. Maybe. But Copenhagen faces problems. Larger developing countries like India and China are claiming a right to despoil the environment as Western Europe and the United States did during their growth spurts. The Africans are threatening to walk out unless they get big development aid.

Some summit time in Pittsburgh needs to be devoted to not letting any country or region try to take a pass on a responsible approach in Copenhagen to this global problem.

5) I, for one, would not sob uncontrollably if the summit dealt with the question of international trade with anodyne language this time. The Chinese tire and U.S. chicken feet scrap has shown just how raw nerves are on that subject when countries are trying to preserve smoothness in essential world trade while protecting the jobs of their own workers.

A panel on the G-20 I moderated last week at the Carnegie Music Hall became considerably less melodious when political economist Allan H. Meltzer called Mr. Obama's new tire tariff a "blatant sop for the unions," prompting a sharp rebuttal from Leo W. Gerard, whose presidencies include the rubber union as well as the steel workers.

So I would say, let's paint over that one this time like an empty Pittsburgh storefront for the summit.

Penultimately, for Pittsburgh, not a formal point to be addressed by the summit, but I hope that all our visitors will carry away a positive impression of our city and region. We have tried to make them feel welcome and want nothing more for the next few days than that they feel that sentiment and maybe even think kindly of us in the future, for return visits or even for onward trade and investment.

For Pittsburghers, if it goes well, we should feel proud that our president's faith in us in choosing Pittsburgh as America's host for this important event was fully justified.