European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, one of the targets of a day of global protest against the dominance of the financial sector, said lessons need to be learned from the crisis but he cautioned against radical solutions.
"It is our task to make the world financial system much more solid … that is how I interpret part of the message that comes from this movement," Trichet said in an interview broadcast on French radio Europe 1 and iTele television.
"That is why, from the beginning, from the first G20 meetings, it has been said that it was necessary to strongly reinforce the rules and constraints on the financial sector," he added.
But said authorities should not go as far as to "demolish" the banks, as they financed three quarters of the economy.
"We are halfway there. We have already reinforced the regulation for commercial banks. There is still a lot of work to do, notably on the non-banking (institutions)," said Trichet, who is in the last two weeks of his eight-year mandate at the Frankfurt-based bank.
Trichet said he was not in favour of "de-globalisation" but added that from the anti-globalisation protesters he heard a message that global economic governance needed to be reinforced.
