U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wolin stated that one of the primary topics for the G20 is to ensure that global financial regulatory actions, such as limiting bank leverage, are "well-coordinated." He added that progress has already been seen in this regard.
"I think there is a great deal of consensus globally on the basic goals and the ways to achieve those goals," Wolin said at a local broker-dealer regulatory conference.
He also noted that the United States has consistently supported significantly raising global capital benchmarks, and a great deal of work is currently underway at the G20 level.
"Leverage is indeed an issue that regulators need to address, and the U.S. needs to handle this issue, but it cannot be separated from an international framework," Wolin said at the conference hosted by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
G20 finance ministers and central bank governors are expected to continue discussing financial reform issues, such as bank capital, at a meeting to be held in Busan, South Korea, on June 4-5.
As the G20 and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision are working on these issues, Wolin added, "We want to ensure we understand the substance of the issue—ensuring there are more buffers, more capital, and higher quality capital, but we should also focus on the definition of leverage, which is also an important component of this mechanism."