Henry Farrell points out the political reasons for why regulatory coordination is unlikely to take place at the G20 summit this April. To lift and/or depress Henry's spirits, however, there's this FT story by Tony Barber:
The US and the European Union are finding common ground in their efforts to strengthen global financial market regulation in spite of differences between Anglo-American and continental European cultures, the European Commission’s president said on Friday.
Speaking on the final day of a two-day EU summit in Brussels, José Manuel Barroso predicted that, if the push for tighter regulation ran into obstacles, they might come from big emerging countries such as China rather than the US or UK.
“While I recognise there are differences of legal and financial culture between the so-called Anglo-Saxon and continental models, what I see as a trend is convergence, and not at all that there’s some big fight,” Mr Barroso said.
Referring to a London G20 summit on April 2 of the world’s advanced and emerging economies, he told reporters: “The main problem will come from other countries, like China, for example, that don’t have the culture of a common setting of rules.”
Given the outcome of the G20 Finance Ministers meeting, I agree that there might be less of a transatlantic rift than political scientists would predict. A bargain on regulatory and fiscal arrangements seems quite doable.
On the other hand, that China language coming from Barroso is a bit odd. Having written a book about this, I'd point out that it's not that China doesn't have a "culture of a common setting of rules." It's that until very, very recently, China wasn't invited to the table to write these rules.
One last thing: this bears watching.
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