US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner said in Berlin today that the United States and Germany were in broad agreement about the importance of putting in place more conservative restraints on risk taking.
At a joint news conference with German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, Mr Geithner welcomed what he called Germany's quick response to dealing with financial strains and said the United States was "completely committed to a cooperative global approach" to the crisis.
Mr Schaeuble said the two governments are "closer together" than is perceived.
Mr Geithner is in Germany today as part of his efforts to get a co-ordinated European response to stabilise the euro amidby fears that a Greek-style debt crisis could hit more countries. He met European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and ECB council member and Bundesbank chief Axel Weber in Frankfurt before meeting Mr Schaeuble in Berlin.
During his stopover in London yesterday, Mr Geithner told Europeans that markets wanted to see the euro zone activate its €750 billion emergency plan designed to protect the currency.
Washington has grown increasingly concerned that the effects of the Greek fiscal blow-out could spread well beyond Europe, with banks prone to a similar confidence crisis that roiled world markets during the 2007-2009 financial crisis.
Germany, Europe's biggest economy and its main paymaster, holds the key to any successful EU-wide action. Its initial reluctance to bail out Athens was blamed for the EU's slow response once Greece's debt blow-out began morphing into a crisis of confidence in the euro zone as a whole.
Mr Schaeuble angered his EU partners this month by going it alone and signing off on a ban on so-called naked short selling of Germany's top financial stocks, euro zone government debt and credit default insurance contracts on that debt.
Berlin blames speculators for aggravating the debt crisis with aggressive bets against the euro, but the move was seen as largely symbolic because it was isolated and most of the targeted trades took place outside of Germany's jurisdiction.