Lord Turner: new international standards on finance would have made little difference

Interesting little snippet via the FT Westminster blog suggesting that Lord (Adair) Turner, chair of the Financial Services Authority, believes:

"...international standards and better co-ordination would have made little difference to the course of the credit crisis. It would not have improved the Federal Reserve’s regulation of Citigroup or the FSA’s regulation of Northern Rock."

This is despite the fact that Gordon Brown has made huge political capital out of his desire to reform the international system of bank regulation. He has regularly implied this could have prevented the downturn... and it was something he has been arguing for (apparently) for over a decade.

Apparently, No 10 responded by saying the PM had actually said: "we did need better global co-operation".

So no disagreement there, then?