In World Economy News 10/03/2017
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said he sees common ground between Germany and the U.S. on how to set rules for regulating the global financial sector ahead of his first face-to-face encounter with U.S. Treasury Chief Steven Mnuchin next week.
Mr. Schaeuble is set to meet with Mr. Mnuchin next Thursday ahead of the Group of 20 meeting of finance ministers in Germany.
“I think we have a pretty common ground and that will also agree that we need to stick to basic lessons drawn from the last financial crisis,” Mr. Schaeuble said. He was speaking at a conference in Berlin about the role of local banks as part of Germany’s presidency of the G20.
“For big, system-relevant banks we need internationally-accorded, strict rules,” he said.
Mr. Schaeuble sounded optimistic about the U.S.’s pledge to review global financial regulation. He said reviewing regulation as such was “not yet wrong,” referring to President Donald Trump’s moves to scale back financial market rules. “We also constantly review our financial market regulation, that is also necessary.”
The minister said another point that that made him optimistic ahead of the meeting was that the U.S. had declared that it continued to reject public support for troubled banks.
Mr. Schaeuble, however, warned again that protectionism or nationalistic measures weren’t the right answer, even less so today, after the last financial crisis showed how important stable financial markets are.
Source: Dow Jones
