International Monetary coordination

As I nervously watched congress pass a $700b plan to rescue the United States from a serious credit crisis, I wondered how this would affect international banking. Gone are the days of isolation in the money markets. The world is financially intertwined. The news has perked up about such issues.
In the New York Times:

"The lack of coordination — despite pledges to the contrary from European Union officials on Monday, and a plea from the head of the International Monetary Fund to step forward with concrete plans — raised the prospect that the European Central Bank would need to help mop up the mess by cutting interest rates, a move hinted at by the bank’s president, Jean-Claude Trichet, last week."

While Europe has a financial union, how coordinated are they in saving their own banks? Apparently, working furiously towards more collaboration, but not sure how.


“We’ve seen both at the national level and more importantly at the international level, that there’s no strategy,” said Richard Portes of the Center for Economic Policy Research in London on Monday, adding that “it reflects the underlying fact that individual governments don’t have a clear sense of where to go.”

Consider the tension in negotiations that different countries feel in attempting to rescue their own interconnected financial systems. On a macro level, one could examine how a calmer (dare I say relaxed?) interaction might bring coherence to these desperate times?