Opinion: In today’s pages: G20, card check and troubled assets

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The Times’ Op-Ed page introduces a new opinion writer with an impressive resume today: President Barack Obama, who lays out his vision for next week’s G-20 summit in London. Obama aims to convince other countries to launch government-sponsored bailouts of their own financial systems in line with those in the United States; he also calls for boosting the International Monetary Fund, resisting protectionism and cracking down on offshore tax havens.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg, meanwhile, takes aim at the union-backed ‘card check’ proposal being considered by congressional Democrats -- if it passes, he says, it would enable unions to shanghai workers much like British press gangs seized sailors in the 19th century. And economists Simon Johnson and James Kwak weigh in on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s proposal to manage $1 trillion in troubled bank assets.

The Times editorial board, too, has Geithner’s proposal at top of mind (and the top of the page), welcoming the effort to have the prices for troubled assets set by the market, not the government. We also examine reports that the Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of an official finding that global warming endangers public health and welfare, a significant ruling that could eventually lead to widescale national regulation of greenhouse gases -- though not as wide nor as quickly implemented as alarmist critics claim. And we urge California’s congressional delegation to restore a pilot program allowing Mexican trucks to travel north of the border, which was killed last month. Mexican retaliation for the protectionist measure would be economically devastating to the Golden State.

All that, and Letters too.