Volcker sees crisis leading to global regulation (Eileen Aj Connelly)

  Speaking to a number of those experts Friday, Paul Volcker, a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, cited not only the lack of understanding of the global financial meltdown but the "shocking" speed with which it had spread across the world.

   "One year ago, we would have said things were tough in the United States, but the rest of the world was holding up," Volcker told a conference featuring Nobel laureates, economists and investors at Columbia University in New York. "The rest of the world has not held up."

  In fact, the 81-year-old former chairman of the Federal Reserve said, "I don't remember any time, maybe even the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast."

  He noted that industrial production is falling in countries across the globe faster than in the United States, one result of the decline caused by the breakdown of unbridled financial markets that operated on a global scale.

  "It's broken down in the face of almost all expectation and prediction," he noted.