Germany and UK want global financial regulator

The UK and Germany believe that a new international system regulating the financial sector must be constructed to prevent a repeat of global banking crisis in the future.

Peter Steinbrueck, Germany's Social-Democrat finance minister, raised on Sunday (21 September) the idea of "an international authority that will make the traffic rules for financial markets," while speaking to German radio, Reuters reports.

Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to outline proposals for just such a body, run under the authority of the International Monetary fund, in a speech to the Labour Party conference on Monday, as well as domestic plans to crack down on "irresponsible" bonuses handed out in the City, London's financial quarter.

"I think what people haven't appreciated is we've now got global financial systems but we've only got national regulators to cover them," Mr Brown told the BBC ahead of the speech, adding that he had been trying to convince his international counterparts for years of the need for "a global system of financial regulation."

His finance minister, Alistair Darling, according to the country's Guardian newspaper, is also set to tell his fellow Labour Party members: "Just as one government alone cannot combat global terrorism, just as one government alone cannot combat climate change, so one government alone cannot deal with the consequences of globalisation."

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