Indeed, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Merkel have no authority over interest-rate-setting committees at the Fed or the ECB. That leaves Mr. Singh with only one course of action: tighten monetary and fiscal policies to stabilize India's wobbly currency – a tough and politically damaging policy option in the run-up to general elections next spring.

A highly trained economist, Mr. Singh knows that there is no way around that. And that is what other G20 developing economies with trade deficits ranging from 3 percent to 7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) – such as Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey and South Africa – will have to do to stem their capital outflows and to prepare for shrinking world liquidity in the months ahead.



(Read more: Baptism of fire for India's new central bank chief)



None of this is new, and none of this should have come as a surprise to the emerging world, whose leaders now find it politically convenient to blame outside forces for their misaligned economic policies.



Putin's lucrative "hikiwake" solutions



But here are some little-noticed geostrategic moves on the margins of the G20 that might be of interest to savvy long-term investors.



True to his word, Mr. Putin is delivering on his commitment to solve Russia's territorial dispute with Japan. At issue are the four South Kuril islands (which Japan calls Northern Territories) the Red Army took toward the end of WWII. This border problem has obstructed the signing of a peace agreement between the two nations following WWII, because Japan poses the return of the four islands as a condition for the peace treaty and for closer economic and political relations with Russia.



Mr. Putin wants to break the deadlock. In an interview with Asahi Shimbun on March 2, 2012, he said that Russia and Japan should divide these four islands, and, with a score of 2:2, it would be just like a "hikiwake" (draw) in a judo contest. He promised in that interview that he would summon Russian and Japanese experts to the negotiating table and, judo black belt that he is, that he would then give them the martial arts command "hajime" (begin).



(Read more: Territorial disputes— can Japan afford them?)



That is exactly what he did. The bilateral expert group seems to be nearing a solution, as intimated during a friendly meeting Mr. Putin had with the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in St. Petersburg. The Russian leader announced that he was sending his foreign and defense ministers to Japan next month to work with their Japanese colleagues on the details of the territorial settlement and on the peace treaty.



Investors should note that potentially huge business deals are behind all this. The development of proven and untapped mineral resources in Siberia and the Russian Far East are Moscow's priorities. And all of these projects – trapped in the long-running territorial dispute – have been of immense interest to Japan's multinational trading conglomerates for quite some time.



Apparently peeved by Europeans' indecision and incessant political hectoring, Mr. Putin has now resolutely turned to China, Japan and South Korea for closer economic cooperation.