U.K. Financial Services Secretary Paul Myners said banks should shoulder responsibility for potential losses as he played host to a meeting on financial institutions considered too big to fail.
"Going forward it is important that any costs that governments incur for interventions in the financial sector are distributed more fairly," Myners said as he opened the meeting in London with Group of Seven finance ministers as well as representatives of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. "There is clearly a strong rationale to charge for the externality caused by the financial sector and financial institutions should shoulder the responsibilities for losses they may face."
Myners said in an article in the Guardian newspaper Monday that voters are right to be angry with bankers after the bailouts of 2008 were followed by bonus payouts.
Among the options he listed were "a global insurance levy, the use of innovative contingent capital instruments developed in the U.K. and a global transactions tax."
He did not include proposals made by President Obama last week to bar proprietary trading by banks.
