Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh (25. Sep 2009):

Prudent risk management suggests that policy will likely need to begin normalization before it is obvious that it is necessary, possibly with greater force than is customary.
* Übersetzung: Zinserhöhungen stehen an, und zwar größer als Alan Greenspan hätte früher sie erhöhte.
Alan Greenspan in 2003:
The FOMC stands prepared to maintain a highly accommodative stance of policy for as long as needed to promote satisfactory economic performance.
* Übersetzung: Zinsen unter der Regentschaft von Greenspan blieben bei niedrigen 1%.

• Report of the Commission of Experts of the President of the United Nations General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System PDF (21 September 2009)
• Presentation of the Report of the Commission … at the Carnegie Council by Joseph Stiglitz MP3 (21 September 2009)

Gefunden bei un.org

UN Reform Commission

The Commission of Experts of the President of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System

The Commission will thus produce a report on recommendations to be considered in the preparatory process leading to the Conference at the highest level on the world financial and economic crisis and its impact on development called for in the final document adopted at Doha in December 2008 (resolution A/RES/63/239).

Members of the Commission

Mr. Joseph Stiglitz (USA) (Chair) University Professor, Columbia University, Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences (2001). Former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank.
Mr. Andrei Bougrov (Russia) Managing Director and member of the Board of Directors of the Interros Company. Former Principal Resident Representative of Russia, Executive Director and member of the Board of Directors of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Mr. Yousef Boutros-Ghali (Egypt) Minister of Finance. Chair of the International Monetary and Financial Committee of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund.
Mr. Jean-Paul Fitoussi (France) Professor of Economics at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris since 1982. Currently President of the Scientific Council of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and President of the Observatoire Français des Conjunctures Economiques.
Mr. Charles A. E. Goodhart (UK) Norman Sosnow Professor of Banking and Finance Emeritus, London School of Economics. Former Chief Advisor to the Bank of England and member of its Monetary Policy Committee.
Mr. Robert Johnson (USA) Former Chief Economist of the US Senate Banking Committee and former Senior Economist of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee. Former managing director at Soros Fund Management. Member of the Board of Directors of the Economic Policy Institute and the Institute for America’s Future.
Mr. Jomo Kwame Sundaram (United Nations) Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, United Nations Department of Economics and Social Affairs.
Mr. Benno Ndulo (Tanzania) Governor of the Bank of Tanzania.
Mr. José Antonio Ocampo (Colombia) Former UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs and Finance Minister, Colombia. Currently Professor, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.
Mr. Pedro Páez (Ecuador) Former Minister for Economic Coordination, Ecuador.
Mr. Avinash Persaud (Barbados) Chairman of Intelligence Capital Limited. Member of council, London School of Economics. Founding director of the Global Association of Risk Professionals.
Mr. Yaga Venugopal Reddy (India) Former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
Mr. Rubens Ricupero (Brazil) Former Secretary-General of UNCTAD. Former Minister of Finance of Brazil.
Mr. Eisuke Sakakibara (Japan) Former Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs. Currently Professor at Waseda University, Tokyo.
Mr. Chukwuma Soludo (Nigeria) Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria.
Ms. Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul (Germany) Federal Minister of Cooperation and Development.
Mr. Yu Yongding (China) Director, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Former Member of Monetary Policy Committee, People’s Bank of China.
Ms. Zeti Akhtar Aziz (Malaysia) Governor and Chairman, Central Bank of Malaysia.

Rapporteur

Mr. Jan Kregel – Former UNDESA senior staff member now Senior Scholar, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and Distinguished Research Professor, University of Missouri, Kansas City.

Special Representatives of the President of the General Assembly

Mr. François Houtart (Belgium)
Mr. Ali Boukrami (Algeria)
Mr. Oswaldo Martínez (Cuba)

Gefunden bei cfr.org

Listen to Muammar al-Qaddafi … discuss international issues including the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and nuclear proliferation.

Original-Audioquelle

Gefunden bei faz.net

Von der Liste gestrichen. Die Schweiz ist keine Steueroase mehr

Am Donnerstag unterzeichnete die Schweiz das zwölfte Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen (DBA) gemäß dem Musterabkommen der OECD mit Qatar, wie das Finanzministerium mitteilte.

Damit erfüllte die Schweiz nun die Bedingung, um nicht mehr als Steueroase zu gelten. Die neuen Abkommen legen fest, dass Schweizer Behörden nicht nur in schweren Fällen von Steuerbetrug sondern auch bei einfacher Steuerhinterziehung ausländischen Staaten Amtshilfe leisten und auf Anfrage Bankinformationen über mutmaßliche Steuersünder freigeben müssen.

Druck großer G-20-Länder

Zu der Anpassung ihrer Amtshilfe-Grundsätze hatte sich die Schweizer Regierung erst Mitte März unter dem Druck großer G-20-Länder bereitgefunden. Mit dem deutschen Finanzminister Peer Steinbrück an der Spitze hatten die Länder den Eidgenossen mit einer schwarzen Liste gedroht, die den Wirtschaftsverkehr der stark exportabhängigen Eidgenossenschaft mit dem Ausland ernsthaft behindert hätte.

Die Amtshilfeanträge aus dem Ausland müssen Namen und Bank eines Verdächtigen enthalten. Ausgeschlossen sind durch die Abkommen pauschale auf allgemeinen Kriterien basierende Anfragen ohne Namen.

Gefunden bei latimes.com

The U.S. will seek to give China a bigger voice on global policies.

Leaders of the world’s biggest economies gathering here for the Group of 20 summit have agreed that the organization will replace the Group of Eight as a permanent body for international economic cooperation, the White House announced late Thursday.

• Das Weiße Haus gab bekannt, die Gruppe der 20 werde als Organ permanent für internationale Wirtschaftskooperation die G8 ersetzen.
• Was aber ist dann mit der OECD?

The change reflects the world’s shifting economic powers and a need for the U.S. and the traditional European powers to secure the cooperation of fast-growing economies such as China, India and Brazil to make progress on pressing issues.

The G-8 — made up of the U.S., Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia — has been criticized as an elite, anachronistic body that couldn’t get much done because the main issues they faced often involved emerging nations that weren’t at the table

The U.S. also is pushing in Pittsburgh to give greater representation to those emerging countries at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The moves are part of an Obama administration effort to win the broad support here for a U.S. proposal calling for major economic structural changes designed to cure global imbalances.

Among other expected developments, G-20 leaders are aiming for significant agreements today on regulating the global financial system as well as more modest progress on climate change.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said that compromises were within reach on a stricter regulatory framework for executive compensation and higher capital reserve requirements for financial institutions.

• Geithner: in Sachen Boni und Kapitalreserven von Banken und Versicherungen sei ein Kompromiss nahe.

The new financial regulations would be designed to discourage excessive risk-taking and to reduce the chance of a future economic crisis as severe as the latest one.

Though Geithner offered few details, he suggested officials were in accord more than previously thought, saying that “a set of pretty detailed standards” would be revealed today with fairly rapid timetables for when they would take effect.

The U.S. and Europe had appeared to be at odds over both executive pay and capital requirements, with Germany and France in particular calling for more stringent compensation restrictions while complaining that the U.S. push for banks to hold more capital as a buffer against future losses would put European banks at a disadvantage.

Barry D. Wood: Power Shift, the Stunning Rise of the G20

from China on The Huffington Post by Barry D. Wood

In the span of just ten months, key developing countries have accomplished what they could not achieve in the previous half a century: They have shouldered aside the staid 7 nation club of Euro-Atlantic nations plus Japan and taken seats at the top table of economic decision making. With its 3rd emergency summit underway in Pittsburgh, the G20 has quickly emerged as the principal agent for coping with world recession and managing globalization.

• Der Euro-Atlantische Club der G8 sei tot.

It is remarkable how rapidly the G20 has overtaken the G8 and how widespread that change is supported in Washington. Tim Adams, for two years the top international official in the Bush Treasury Department, says “there is no going back to the Euro North Atlantic club that was the G7/8.” Fred Bergsten, head of Washington’s Peterson Institute for International Economics, declares, “the G20 should be the new steering committee of the world economy.” Jeff Shafer, an international economic official in the Clinton administration, says the inclusiveness and wide geographic reach of the G20 makes it “tower over the outmoded G8.” Even the chief of the global bankers association, Charles Dallara of the Institute of International Finance, views the G7/8 as “outmoded and discredited.” The G7, to which Russia was added in 1998, has guided the operations of the International Monetary Fund, where the Americans and Europeans call the shots.

• Es gebe keinen Weg mehr zurück zur G8: altmodisch und in Verruf geraten.

With fast growing China, India, Brazil, South Korea, plus Australia, Mexico, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Africa and Indonesia added to the G8 of four west European powers, Japan, Canada, Russia and the United States, the G20 countries comprise 85% of global GDP and 75% of world population. This economic clout, geographic diversity, and inclusiveness, says Francis Fukuyama of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), gives the G20 “unchallenged legitimacy” that the G8 doesn’t possess.

• Die G20 habe jene Legitimität, die die G8 nie hatte.

Ironically, this fundamental shift was promulgated not by Barack Obama or developing countries themselves, but by George Bush. Eleven months ago, at the height of the financial panic, French President Nicholas Sarkozy and European Union president Manuel Barroso hurried to Washington beseeching Bush to cap his eight-year term with an emergency summit that would redesign global capitalism. Following a two and half hour Saturday session at Camp David, Bush agreed, sort of. He would call an emergency summit to “ensure that this kind of crisis doesn’t happen again.” But it wouldn’t be just the larger G8 gathering that the Europeans wanted. Instead, Bush would convene the first ever summit of the G20, a finance ministers’ forum that had been meeting since 1999. So, the Europeans got their summit, but one where their own influence would be diluted, and where the agenda would eschew systemic overhaul in favor gradual reform.

• Die Europäer bekamen den Club, den sie haben wollten, einen Club in der sie selbst weniger Macht besaßen.

Dan Price, Bush’s chief planner for the meeting, collaborated with the other G20 sherpas to organize the Washington Summit in just four weeks. Held over an evening and the following day at the National Building Museum, the gathering issued a long communiqué that embraced far-reaching stimulus programs to pull the world economy back from the precipice. Working groups were given short deadlines to develop measures to minimize systemic risk, monitor large financial transactions and strengthen regulation. At a follow-up meeting in London in April, the G20 leaders took action, tripling the resources of the International Monetary Fund, reinforcing its primary role of global surveillance and lender of last resort. Using straight-forward language, the London communiqué blamed “major failures in financial supervision and regulation” for the crisis.

Bergsten of the Peterson Institute extols the substantive measures emerging from the three G20 summits. Acknowledging that its institutional status is a work in progress, he views the process as a means of integrating China and India into global economic management. He even suggests that the G20 should declare that instead of persisting with the practice of having a European at the top, the next head of the IMF should be Chinese or Indian. Nancy Birdsall, of the Center for Global Development, thinks along the same lines, believing the financial crisis gives “fresh impetus to overdue changes in global governance,” like increased voting power for emerging economies in the IMF and World Bank. A G20 panel is likely to propose a 10% voting increase for developing countries, a measure that would come at the expense of the smaller European nations.

The G-20: An Idea from India

September 11th, 2009
Guest Author: Arvind Subramanian, Peterson Institute for International Economics

In the run-up to the G-20 Summit in London in April, China created a frisson of excitement by pushing for the use of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) as an alternative to the dollar as a global economic currency. To be sure, China’s demarche was self-serving. It is also true that when China now talks, the world must listen. But the Chinese proposal was taken seriously because it had enough objective appeal and systemic relevance.

• SDRs ist eine Geldtausch/-druck-Sonderrecht, die eine nationale Währung stützt.

In all the discussions about the reform of the international economic architecture and the G-20 process, India’s predominant concern has been with getting a seat at the table. This desire for influence is appropriate and attaining it is long overdue particularly since existing international arrangements, especially at the IMF and World Bank, are outdated and inequitable. But acquiring influence cannot become an end in itself. ‘Influence for what’ is a question that India must continually ask.

So, in the context of the G-20 discussions, what big idea could India put forward and pursue that, like the Chinese proposal, both served its long-term economic interests and improved the working of international financial institutions? Here’s a suggestion: India should push for a radical reorientation of the World Bank, so that it undertakes less traditional lending to governments and focuses more on financing global public goods, especially relating to R&D in climate change, tropical agriculture, and diseases.

• Indien schlägt vor, die Aufgabe der Weltbank zu ändern; vom
• Financier einer Nationalregierung eines Entwicklungslandes zu einem
• Financier von öffentlichen Gütern mit weltweiten Ausmaßen, wie F&E zur Erderwärmung, Landwirtschaft in den Tropen und Medizin.

The World Bank is seen as a financial institution, primarily concerned with providing official financial assistance to developing country governments. But this perspective needs to change both for India and the world.

India’s need for official financial assistance is diminishing rapidly as it gains access to private capital markets, and as India’s own savings have risen dramatically over time. Its development challenges — whether to cope with climate change or raise agricultural productivity — require technology breakthroughs that India, and all of Indian ingenuity, cannot achieve on its own. India has a strategic interest in shaping the World Bank to generate some of this technology and other public goods.

• Indien benötige nicht länger Finanzhilfe, sondern technische Hilfe besonderer Art: Forschung und Entwicklung öffentlicher Güter.

The value to India of such goods is illustrated by the World Bank — financed and supervised research study — a classic public good — that brought to light the serious problem of teacher absenteeism in Indian primary schools. This study provided valuable input into, and radically changed for the better, the policy debate in India on primary education. It fatally undercut arguments for pumping resources unconditionally into the public education system. How many of the Bank’s traditional lending activities can claim such beneficial impacts?

From a systemic perspective too, the World Bank needs to evolve away from being predominantly an aid agency, dominated by the G-7 and serving Africa. The need for this evolution is suggested by empirical evidence.

It is awfully hard to find evidence that traditional World Bank–type aid works. In a series of papers, Raghuram Rajan, former chief economist of the IMF, and I were unable to find any positive effects of aid on long-run growth but did find evidence consistent with some of the negative effects of aid in depressing manufacturing exports and worsening domestic institutions.

On the other hand, it is widely accepted that some of the biggest contributions to development have come from global public goods such as the green revolution and medical breakthroughs, especially related to the development of antibiotics and vaccines. The technical discoveries leading up to the green revolution were financed by official aid and private philanthropy. And the adaptation of green revolution technologies to varying climatic conditions across the developing world was actually undertaken in the internationally funded Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) network of research institutions (including the Hyderabad-located International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics [ICRISAT]) that are now sadly in decline, in part due to international financial neglect.

Despite this evidence, the World Bank’s current lending practices overwhelmingly favor traditional lending to governments over global public goods. The numbers are difficult to pin down but global public goods financing is unlikely to exceed 20 per cent of total World Bank lending. In other words, current practice is inversely correlated with the evidence. What makes this inverse correlation particularly egregious is that there are many suppliers of traditional aid (bilateral donors, NGOs, private philanthropy) but few suppliers of global public goods. The World Bank should be filling the latter empty space instead of further crowding the lending business.

In the run-up to the next G-20 summit at Pittsburgh, India is now considering asking for a substantial increase in World Bank’s capital. More capital to finance more traditional lending would not, if the evidence cited earlier is right, yield the biggest bang for the buck. Moreover, this capital would be poured into a structure of governance that is antiquated and skewed in favor of the G-7. What possible strategic interest of India is served by this proposal to enlarge the Bank’s capital base and perpetuate the status quo?

India should rather put forward a new vision for the World Bank, with a central focus on global public goods, a point also emphasized and elaborated by Devesh Kapur, the author of the definitive history of the Bank. Nancy Birdsall of the Center for Global Development and I have argued that the governance structure for global public good activities should be quite different from current arrangements. This could be the thin end of the wedge for perhaps eventually breaking up the World Bank into two institutions: first, an aid agency devoted to traditional lending activities that could continue to be dominated by the G-7; and second, a new institution that focuses more on the creation of global public goods, one in which middle income countries such as India, China, and Brazil could start making greater financial contributions and, in return, obtain commensurate power and influence.

Referring to the two Bretton Woods financial institutions, Keynes once wittily observed that the ‘Bank’s a fund and the Fund’s a bank.’ Whether the IMF should continue to be a bank is being actively debated. But it is in India’s interest to push the World Bank to be less of a fund and more engaged in generating ideas and technologies for development.

This article originally appeared here at PIIE, and here in the Business Standard.

Arvind Subramanian is Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) and Center for Global Development, and Senior Research Professor, Johns Hopkins University.

The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement its member countries’ official reserves. Its value is based on a basket of four key international currencies, and SDRs can be exchanged for freely usable currencies. With a general SDR allocation taking effect on August 28 and a special allocation on September 9, 2009, the amount of SDRs will increase from SDR 21.4 billion to SDR 204.1 billion (currently equivalent to about $317 billion).IMF:Factsheet SDR

Gefunden bei news.bbc.co.uk

G20: Pledge by pledge

Leaders of the G20 group of the world’s most powerful countries pledged to bring the world economy out of recession when they met in London in April.
As they meet in Pittsburgh, five months later, just how far have their governments gone in meeting some of their key commitments?

• London, April 2009 und das große Versprechen,
• Pittsburgh, fünf Monate später September 2009.

PLEDGE: $1.1tn support package partly met

In April, headlines trumpeted a $1.1 trillion deal to help countries fight the economic crisis. Much of this funding was to be directed toward the International Monetary Fund.

• IWF soll:
• USD 1100 Milliarden abwickeln können.

The G20 has succeeded in increasing the IMF’s lending capacity by $500bn to $750bn. The target was only met earlier this month after the EU increased its initial pledge of about $100bn to $178bn. Only a tiny fraction of this ($2.3bn) has so far been allocated.
The IMF has allocated an additional $250bn worth of reserves to member countries that can be tapped when needed. Around $100bn has been allocated to developing countries.

The IMF has also approved its first major sale of gold since 2000 to raise money for additional financing for poor countries. The sale of 403 metric tonnes of gold should raise $13bn – more than the $6bn asked for by the G20
The G20 also pledged to help boost trade by providing $250bn worth of financing, with $50bn expected to come from the World Bank. The G20 says that $65bn has been taken up so far. For its part, the World Bank has only received commitments of $7.8bn from donors
The G20 said it would support an increase in lending to poor countries of at least $100bn through multilateral development banks (MDBs). The G20 says MDBs are planning to lend an extra $110bn this year but concrete figures are hard to come by and it’s not clear if this is from fresh or existing funding.

• USD 250 Milliarden seien zusätzlich vom IWF beschafft worden,
  • USD 100 Mrd. von den 250 stünden ausschließlich den Entwicklungsländern zu.
• USD 013 Milliarden durch Goldverkäufe stünden ausschließlich für Ärmstländer zu,
• USD 250 Milliarden seien für Geschäftskredite reserviert,
  • USD 065 Mrd. von den 250 seien beansprucht worden,
  • USD 050 Mrd. habe die Weltbank zu liefern,
    • USD 007,8 Mrd. der 50 kämen von den Geberländern;
• USD 110 Milliarden seien für Entwicklungsbanken (z.B. ADB) bestimmt,
• USD 178 Milliarden von der EU,
• USD 750 Milliarden ca. Vermögen zu verleihen/investieren, in der Summe zum September 2009.
• USD 1100—750=350 Milliarden fehlen noch, und nur
• USD 002,3 Mrd. wurden von den 750 abgewickelt.

PLEDGE: $5tn stimulus spending partly met

G20 governments pledged a total of $5tn in stimulus measures to boost their own economies, predicting that the extra cash would increase global economic output by 4% by the end of 2010.
However, few countries have detailed exactly how much they have spent and the IMF’s own estimate is slightly more cautious at 2% of GDP in 2009 and 1.5% of GDP in 2010.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has suggested that more than half of the $5tn has yet to be committed and has warned against switching off “the economic life support”.
However, the debate in Pittsburgh is likely to turn to how the the global economy can wean itself off the extra support now that there are signs of a recovery.
There are also fears that increased public spending could jeopardise any rebound given high levels of government debt and the deficits they have created in some countries.

• USD 5000 Milliarden sollten von den G20 für Subventionen ausgegeben werden.

PLEDGE: Reform IMF voting power not met

This is a tricky issue and little progress made so far.
For historical reasons, smaller European countries like the Netherlands and Switzerland are over-represented on the IMF board in relation to the size of their economies, while emerging giants like China are clamouring for more power.
This is going to be a difficult question, with the G20 setting a deadline of January 2011 for new proposals.

• 014 Mitglieder halten 55,3% der Stimmen,
• 172 Mitglieder 44,7%.

PLEDGE: Regulate hedge funds not met

The G20 agreed in April that hedge funds, which have been subject to much less regulation than other investment funds, should be better supervised as part of wide-ranging measures to strengthen financial oversight.

• Obwohl Hedge Funds wenig, ja gar nichts mit der aktuellen Weltwirtschaftskrise zu tun haben; wohl eher mit der von 1997-2001 (Asien, Brasilien, Russland, Wall Street—LTMC).

The EU has proposed a draft law that would subject the industry to much tougher rules and make them more transparent. Funds which didn’t abide by the rules would not be able to operate in its 26 member countries.
The UK thinks parts of the draft law go beyond what is required to make the sector safer and could drive hedge funds out of London, where many are now based.
However, there is broad agreement among G20 members that hedge funds should be required to submit more information and data to regulators.

PLEDGE: Curb tax havens met

The G20 reckons there has been most progress on this issue, with governments eager to boost tax receipts as the recession hits public finances.
Since April 2009, 13 jurisdictions, including Belgium and Austria, have implemented internationally agreed tax standards, according to the OECD which monitors tax matters.

• Estland,
• Israel,
• Bahrain,
• Belgien,
• Bermuda,
• British Virgins,
• Aruba,
• Caymans,
• Indien,
• Slovenien,
• Österreich,
• Luxemburg.

Switzerland and Liechtenstein remain on a “grey list” of about 33 tax havens but have agreed to co-operate with foreign tax authorities.
The G20 has given tax havens until March 2010 to co-operate on tax evasion or face sanctions.

• Es fehlen noch (englische Namen): Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, Brunei, Chile, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Dominica, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guatemala, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Malaysia, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Montserrat, Nauru, Netherlands Antilles, Panama, Philippines, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Singapore, Switzerland, Turks and Caicos Islands, Uruguay, Vanuatu

PLEDGE: Bonux crackdown partly met

There has been broad backing for restrictions on banking bonuses, which have been blamed for encouraging excessive risk-taking by some in the financial industry.
Individual countries have already enacted some measures, but the US and UK have rejected calls for mandatory caps on bonuses. Given this disagreement, the G20 is most likely to agree some kind of “set of principles” for banker compensation.
Broadly speaking, European countries – France, Germany and the Netherlands – are taking tougher action than the US and UK.

PLEDGE: Financial Stability Board met

The G20 in April agreed to establish the Financial Stability Board to make the financial system less vulnerable to future crises by encouraging cross-border cooperation on regulation.
Based in Basel, Switzerland, the international agency is a beefed-up successor to the Financial Stability Forum and brings together national regulators to discuss issues such as banker pay, accounting standards and requiring banks to hold more capital to absorb losses.
It held its second meeting earlier this month and will submit papers to the G20 in Pittsburgh on bonuses, on progress since the first summit and what future steps need to be taken to better regulate the financial industry.
To date, however, the most concrete steps on strengthening financial regulation have taken place at the national level and it is not yet clear how important a body this will become.

• Der FSB, in Basel, habe der G20 Bericht zu erstatten.