Germany, US call for regulating financial markets

The German Federal Minister for Economy and Technology Rainer Bruederle and the US Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, have called for involving major threshold nations, including India, in regulating the world financial markets and reforming the banking sector.

Future reforms in these areas should be worked out and implemented jointly by the leading industrialised and threshold nations, they said after discussions in Washington on Tuesday.

It was Bruederle’s first visit to the US capital since taking office at the end of October.

The two ministers agreed that individual attempts by nations must be avoided and the G-20 provided the most suitable forum for globally coordinated measures to regulate the financial markets and to reform the banking sector.

Bruederle stressed that there should not be any "underbidding rivalry" worldwide to make financial centres competitive with lax regulations. "The G-20 provides the right framework for that," Bruederle said.

Bruederle and Geithner agreed that new measures to avoid a repetition of the global financial crisis should be discussed at the next summit of the G-20 heads of state and government in Canada in June.

Their discussions also covered concern over growing protectionism, the role of China and India in the global economy and further measures needed to cope with the continuing effects of the financial and economic crisis.