In case you did not know, it is Transatlantic Week in Washington. This goes hand in hand with my internship at the German Marshall Fund because their entire purpose is to facilitate cooperation with Europe on global and Transatlantic issues.
Today, one of my bosses and I attended a round table session at the capital about Transatlantic financial convergence. There were some very notable people there: Congressman Darrell Issa from California; Peter Skinner, a member of the European Parliament for the labor party; Laura Lane, who is the Managing Director and Head of International Government Affairs at Citi; and Erick Holt, a member of the General Counsel at Allianz Global Investors.
The talk focused on financial convergence in dealing with the crises on both sides of the Atlantic. Erick Holt began the talk and spoke mostly of slowing regulation and striving for increased, targeted coordination. He emphasized that narrowing the focus was important. Laura Lane spoke next and she talked about how it is a goal to increase trade and investment, but there are rules blocking it. She called for the need for consistent and converging rules. Congressman Issa went next and brought up two questions our leaders need to ask themselves in regards to the crisis: Will it happen again? And what do we do to change it? His main points were that it seems like we are heading towards too many “too big to fail” companies, which could to ours and other governments being “too big to fail.” He also advocated for data transparency and interoperable financial databases so that the answers will be available if this situation ever arises again. Peter Skinner went last and primarily touched on these issues.
I’ll be on the Hill a lot this week for Transatlantic Week, so I’ll have some more updates soon, probably from Ben Bernanke’s talk at the Senate Banking Committee meeting.
DR
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