"Sometimes it takes a crisis for people to agree that what is obvious and should have been done years ago can no longer be postponed. We must create a new international financial architecture for the global age," Brown said.
The Bretton Woods system established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world's major industrial states at the end of World War II, laying the groundwork for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Brown said global institutions like the IMF "were all devised by men and women of great vision."
"With the same courage and foresight of their founders, we must now reform the international financial system around agreed principles of transparency, integrity, responsibility, good housekeeping and co-operation across borders," he said.
He said the new system should be based on transparency and integrity.
"First transparency. We must now insist on openness and disclosure, with an immediate adoption of the internationally agreed accounting standards - and the standards being brought forward for the valuation of assets," he said. "Second integrity. We must tackle once and for all the conflicts of interest which have distorted behavior and undermined trust, and now lie at the heart of public concern."
