Obama wants countries to improve their regulatory standards

US president Barack Obama has asked other economies of the world to review and improve the regulatory standards of their financial markets, so as to prevent the crisis the Wall Street is facing now.

"As we work to set high regulatory standards here in the United States, we have to challenge other countries around the
world to do the same," Obama said after addressing his first meeting on regulatory reforms.

'That's how we will stop financial crises from spilling across borders and prevent global crises of the sort that we now face," Obama said.

Observing that the financial crisis in the US has happened due to an outdated regulatory mechanism coupled with failure of the regulators to use the authority they had to protect consumers, markets and the economy, Obama on Friday, started the process to bring in a new set of regulatory mechanism.

Obama had been planning to set out "broad principles" for new regulation prior to an international meeting in London in April, the G20 summit so that this could be shared with the world leaders.

Heads of State of top 20 economic countries of the world would be meeting in London to discuss the current economic crisis. The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has been invited to attend the meeting.