US under attack for financial mistakes

Germany blamed the United States yesterday for spawning the global financial crisis with a blind drive for higher profits and said it would now have to accept greater market regulation and a loss of its financial superpower status.

In some of the toughest language since the crisis threw Wall Street banks into financial disarray earlier this month, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck told parliament the turmoil would leave "deep marks" on both sides of the Atlantic, but called it primarily an American problem.

"The world will never be as it was before the crisis," Steinbrueck, a deputy leader of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), told the Bundestag lower house.