Brown deems crisis as defining moment

The financial crisis is a defining moment for the world economy and there must be global solutions to end it, Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote in The Washington Post yesterday.

Mr Brown cited the creation of a new economic order and formation of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and a world trade body at the end of World War II as models for action to end the current crisis, in a column in the US newspaper.

"Today, the same sort of visionary internationalism is needed to resolve the crises and challenges of a different age," he wrote.

"This is a defining moment for the world economy."

He said the post-war financial institutions are out of date. "They have to be rebuilt for a wholly new era in which there is global, not national, competition and open, not closed, economies. International flows of capital are so big they can overwhelm individual governments. And trust, the most precious asset of all, has been eroded," he wrote.

World leaders must tackle the "root causes" of the crisis. "So the next stage is to rebuild our fractured international financial system," he wrote.

To root out "the irresponsible and often undisclosed lending at the heart of our problems," he said, requires cross-border supervision of financial institutions, shared global accounting and regulatory standards, a more responsible approach to executive compensation, and the renewal of international institutions "to make them effective early-warning systems for the world economy."

Mr Brown also said world leaders should seek a global trade agreement and reject protectionism.

"There are no Britain-only or Europe-only or America-only solutions to today's problems. We are all in this together, and we can only resolve this crisis together," Mr Brown said.