As we track (and try to influence) international economic policies, institutions and summits on an ongoing basis, we thought it would be helpful to feature some of the sites that will help bloggers covering the G20. They give the insights you need to write about the financial crisis and what should be done about it, particularly to ensure that developing countries don't get left off the map entirely. We obviously don't agree with everything on all of them, but think everyone covering the G20 London summit can benefit from reading them.

 
To start three sites on tax havens, an issue that has shot to political prominence, partly because of great blogging.

1) Tax Justice Network blog. Great daily news analysis (by former Reuters correspondent) on campaigns, policy initiatives and debates on tax haven reform.
2) Richard Murphy's Tax Research UK blog  (more details re technicalities and great ripostes to industry vested interests)
3) And the French equivalent Paradis Fiscaux et Judiciare, complete with news blogging covering France and continental Europe, plus reports of recent protests.

Then three collective sites by NGOs and campaign groups that give great overviews of the activism that's bubbling up.

4) Rethinkingfinance : new collaborative portal containing feeds from multiple commentators and activists applying pressure to change financial regulation and the global monetary system.
5) Casinocrash : two progressive researcher collectives blog about the impacts of the crisis and propose a radical shake up of institutions and policies. Plenty of videos of recent debates, including a great one with Filipino economist Walden Bello giving European Commission official Gert-Jan Koopman a hard time.
6) Timeforchange. Want to know where the next protest will be held, or get fired up for one? See this new blog from several European campaign organisations analysing and mobilising on the financial crisis.

Followed by three sites by think tanks or researchers which give more of a sense of what are the causes and possible policy solutions of this crisis.

7) Networkideas.org -Global_Financial_Crisis  features progressive economists from across the developing world (though mainly Asia). 
8) NEF Triple Crunch A progressive think tank assesses the climate, financial and poverty crises and recommends solutions.
9) Bruegel Well-connected mainstream researchers from across Europe give their views on the financial crisis, whether the Euro can survive and how the EU can play a part in governing finance.

The digital divide is still strong, but here are some sites with views from thinkers in the global South.

10) Pambazuka News. The 'weekly forum for social justice in Africa' contains frequent comment, news and analysis from African journalists and activists. On the crisis see particularly Demba Dembele's recent piece, the Global Financial Crisis: Lessons from Africa.
11) Southcentre.org an inter-governmental body that supports governments with their negotiations, now led by influential Malaysian author Martin Khor.
12) IDS Southern Voices on the Financial Crisis. 
 
As for official sites (which we don't normally promote so much), take a look at:

13) The London Summit 2009. The British government has done a great job compared to previous similar summit sites. Let's hope that, in the spirit of sustainability, the site stays live longer than the UK 2005 G8 one, which now displays nothing at all, and a few months ago was being virtually forwarded to a dubious Turkish enterprise. (Sadly the G24 website seems to be hors de combat, too. We were going to recommend this, as it has several papers and positions. Perhaps it has been pysched out by the new prominence of the G20).
14) Last week I had officials from the EC and World Bank use annoying phrase "having a good crisis". But it is certainly true that the World Bank and IMF have shot back to prominence in recent months. 

The best section of both of their sites from my point of view is: the Africa Can blog where Shanta Deverajan and others discuss crisis impacts on Africa and what to do about them. Although the IMF has taken steps to reduce some of its conditionality recently (for which we congratulated them  its website is too straight and self-congratulatory, so no links here).

And the final six of the best:

15) IFIwatch TV  Path-breaking website featuring videos of the effects of the World Bank and other international financial institutions, and what people are doing to raise pressure to transform their policies and practices.
16) Global Dashboard Incisive writing on global governance and foreign policy.
17) Global Dashboard is also part of the G20 Voice blog experiment. This is a brilliant concept, which has got the blogosphere buzzing competitively to find correspondents to cover the G20, partly from the inside. The technical execution is a bit patchy at present, but this certainly one to watch this week.
18)  For an independent journalist who has long been digging into the dark underbelly of the shadow banking system and corporate dubious dealings see The Komisar Scoop.
19 Wire service Inter-Press Service has good, critical, coverage of financial crisis news and civil society responese.
20) And, finally two quite zany videos we have enjoyed. The first flips the normal hierarchy of job-seeking in a brilliant way. The second is a new Spanish one complaining that the bail-out money has been completely misdirected and should have been used to set up new, green, financial institutions.

 
Eurodad declares an interest in the rethinkingfinance website. As well as continuing to use this blog (and our main news and analysis site sections) we will be using this to keep the web world informed of our network's views and positions. 
 
Have we missed some good sites?  If so add them in the comments below
 
 
Alex Wilks
(Also micro-blogging on Twitter)