Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and A International Economic Body

According to the international Herald, a meeting of the Group of 20, an organization of industrialized nations and emerging markets, could begin laying the groundwork for change at a meeting in London in early April, Merkel said. From there, she said, the matter could go to the UN.

Striking a contrast to the gloomy atmosphere this year at a meeting that usually brims with optimism, Merkel argued that the economic crisis had laid bare serious weaknesses in financial regulation, but that the world had to look beyond the immediate.

"Incredible opportunities are opening up," Merkel said. "We are now seeing only the crisis."Merkel urged world financial leaders to implement the points that the G-20 leaders had agreed on in November in Washington. A major theme of that meeting was the need for more information on the complex financial constructs that lie at the heart of the crisis.

She emphasized that "the forces of free market economy" had to underpin the rules that emerge from the crisis. She lauded the German system, which mixes capitalism with a strong social safety net and potent regulators, but said she had no interest in "socialist command economies" and alluded to her own past as a child of the communist system.

"I grew up in what was East Germany," Merkel said. "Today I am chancellor of a united Germany. This shows me that nothing is impossible."


In her speech Friday, Merkel took a dig at the United States and Britain, which blocked German calls for greater openness by hedge funds when it headed the Group of 8 industrialized nations in 2007. "I don't want to cast my gaze back," Merkel said. "But I would like to remind people that in vain did Germany in the G-8 presidency try to inject transparency" into financial markets.