Paul O' Neill backs international insolvency law

21st September, 2001.

Paul O'Neill is quoted in full:

"And, ah, as recently as Monday morning I had breakfast with Horst Kohler from the IMF and said to him: I think now is the time that we need to take the action that's been talked about for years that's never been done, we need an agreement on international bankruptcy law so that we can work with governments that in effect need to go through a Chapter 11 reorganisation instead of socializing the costs of bad decisions, so, on the one hand yes we're paying close attention to Argentina may be some additional necessary actions we' working to see if we can't create the circumstances to use leverage instead of huge amounts of additional money and we're going to work hard and hopefully successfully to put in place things that people that follow these things have known for decades we should have done. Maybe one of the consequences of this tragedies, we'll finally take actions on some of these thingss we know we need to do."