Whether or not the American bailout of the financial sector includes significant regulatory provisions, there’s already an emerging European consensus that the current crisis demonstrates the need for a regulatory body on a global level. From the EU Observer:
Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to outline proposals forjust such a body, run under the authority of the International Monetaryfund, in a speech to the Labour Party conference on Monday. . .
In an op-ed in Le Monde this morning, IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn didn’t go so far as to call for a global regulatory agency, but he did underline the importance of regulatory reforms:
He also argued that with the world’s financial markets so elaborately interconnected, any bailout has to be coordinated on a global scale for it to be effective.
Meanwhile, the fact that this crisis is perceived around the planet as “Made in America” is doing nothing to improve our currently not-so-rosy global image.