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Editor’s Note: The following is an internal Stratfor document produced to provide high-level guidance to our analysts. This document is not a forecast, but rather a series of guidelines for understanding and evaluating events, as well as suggestions on areas for focus.

1. The financial crisis continues: This weekend is certainly the single most important period for us to be aware of since the early days after 9/11 and the final days of the Cold War. This is because the global economic structure may be about to change.

The financial minds behind most of the world’s more economically important countries are meeting in Washington this weekend as an official part of the G-7 finance ministers’ meeting. The G-7 — made up of the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom — are meeting to discuss the global financial crisis. Later in the weekend they will be joined the rest of the G-20 countries, representing the world’s 20 largest economies. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank also have delegations present, as they will be integral in implementing whatever decisions are made by the G-7 and G-20.

These talks are shaping up to be as critical as those seen in Bretton Woods, the site of the 1944 financial summit that laid the groundwork for the post-World War II global economic structure. The global financial crisis has evolved from being about single countries and “just” economics into something much grander. The global financial crisis is now a political one where these states will define how economic life will operate, and lay the groundwork for what is to come.

With the way the meetings over the next three days are set up, it looks as if the G-7 is coming toward a plan of action today, Oct. 10. It is then up to the G-7 members to get the rest of the world on board — not a small task since most countries are looking out for themselves at the moment.

We see the meetings progressing as follow:

First, the G-7 is meeting as this piece is being written, digesting all that has happened in the past few days and coming up with a rough game plan to operate from. Global credit markets have seized up, and any plan with a hope of success must focus on injecting — perhaps even forcing — liquidity into the system.

Second, the G-7 will direct the International Monetary Fund and World Bank — which operationally, if not technically, report to the G-7 — to communicate this plan to the rest of the G-20 in a swarm of bilateral meetings to be held late Oct. 10 after the G-7 summit concludes, with more of the same scheduled for Oct. 11. The intent of this batch of meetings is to bring the entire G-20 on board with the rough game plan, and hammer out the worst of the inevitable disagreements.

Then, at 6 p.m. Eastern time Oct. 11, all of the G-20 will meet to hammer out the final details of how to address the credit crisis.

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