HIGHLIGHTS-Brown's speech

LONDON (Reuters) - Highlights from Prime Minister Gordon Brown's speech on the world's financial system at the London offices of Thomson Reuters:

"This crisis demonstrates beyond doubt that a global capital market requires much stronger global cooperation and supervision. And we need to ensure that we have an effective global early warning system to alert us across continents to economic and financial risk."

"Around us we must build a new Bretton Woods. A new financial architecture for the years ahead. Sometimes it does take a crisis for people to agree that what is obvious and should have been done years ago can no longer be postponed. But we must now create the right new financial architecture for the global age."

"We will not stop at immediate measures to stabilise the system. We also need measures to reshape the global financial system to make it fit for purpose for the future. This work is important for building confidence and this work must start today.

"And we must start by recognising that we are now in a global financial system and that while we have already global flows of capital we have supervision only at a national level.

"And just as we need new global coordination to deal with the waves of change that are defining the new global age from energy supply to climate change, so we need enhanced global cooperation to monitor and then supervise financial flows that know no borders."

"The global financial system is too clouded with opacity, conflicts of interest, irresponsible risk taking, and when problems occur countries have tended to look inwards and deal with them in isolation when it is clear they should look outwards and join in international cooperation."

"This financial crisis now affects the whole world and because we recognise the importance of Asia, so I am in touch with the Asian authorities too.

"Later this week we will go further when we meet as a European Council in Brussels and we are proposing a world leaders meeting at which we must agree the principles and policies for restructuring the financial system across the globe."