UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for “drastic” measures to shore up banks and extend lines of credit to the world's poor Friday and pledged to support European and American efforts to rethink the global financial architecture. He also said the era of self-regulation among the biggest banks and other money-lending institutions had ended. Ban spoke at a closed meeting with heads of the World Bank and IMF focusing primarily on the global financial crisis. “The danger is a succession of cascading financial crises,” Ban warned. “This demands drastic measures. The IMF and the world's central banks may need to set up substantial standby lines of credit for proactive intervention, so that banks in developing nations, too, have adequate funds to draw on in (an) emergency.” The global credit crisis engulfing the finances of nations from Central Europe to Latin America and emerging markets “compounds the food crisis, the energy crisis, the crisis of development in Africa,” Ban said.
