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01/27/2010

The president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, has praised plans by US President Barack Obama to curb the risk-taking of US banks, and said it went in the same direction as the ECB's position.

"The reform proposals are relevant and interesting. We are examining them with great care," Trichet told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Tuesday. "They go in the same direction of our own position, namely ensuring that the banking sector focuses on financing the real economy, which is its key role."

Obama last week presented plans to limit the market share of the top US banks and to restrict their proprietary trading, the practice of dealing in financial instruments for their own account, using their own money. "Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by a bank that is too big to fail," Mr. Obama said last Thursday.

Trichet said bank reform proposals should be coordinated internationally through the G-20 group of leading industrial and emerging economies and the Financial Stability Board, a forum of major national financial authorities such as finance ministries and central banks.

He said the coordination should "ensure that there are no loopholes in our integrated global financial system. I expect therefore that the international community will work actively on such ideas to improve our collective effort against systemic risks."