The Financial Times newspaper reported on Thursday that Brown believes opinion has shifted decisively in favor of a globally coordinated tax after U.S. President Barack Obama’s move last month to raise $90 billion from a U.S. bank levy.

“I’m interested in the way support is building up for international action,” Brown was quoted as saying.

Brown mooted a tax on bank transactions to cover the cost of the multibillion dollar bailouts of 2008 and 2009 at a meeting of G-20 finance officials in November last year.

That suggestion was dismissed by the United States, which instead announced its tax on wholesale funding.

Finance officials from the Group of Seven, who met in Canada over the weekend, played down differences on domestic banking reforms. A British official at the talks said that momentum for a levy was growing, although the details had not been agreed.

“People are now prepared to consider the best mechanism by which a levy could be raised,” Brown told the Financial Times.

The International Monetary Fund is contemplating the issue as it prepares a report on options for requiring banks to “make a fair and substantial contribution” towards bailouts. The report is due to be published in April, before its annual spring meeting in Washington D.C.

“Why should I as a worker pay for the errors in policies?” he asked, in response to reports that the embattled Greek state will cut his pay and, by extension, retirement benefits. “The worker can’t be the scapegoat. So we have to defend ourselves.”

As Damianidis and others on the state payroll prepare to stop work on Wednesday, fear is building that the country’s new government may lack the nerve to cut public wages and pension payments, which make up 51 percent of its budget.

Over the past decade, Greece took full advantage of a strong euro and rock-bottom interest rates to fuel a debt binge by the country’s consumers and its government. This year, if Greece can’t persuade investors to buy 53 billion euros of its government debt, it may have to seek a bailout from its European Union brethren or the International Monetary Fund – or, worse, default.

The stakes are high, not just for Greece but for the entire euro zone, where efforts to forge a common economic identity are threatened by the financial crisis. Last week, the panic spread to Portugal and Spain, and the cost of insuring their debt against a default soared to record levels as investors bet that, like Greece, governments in those countries won’t be able to rein in bloated budgets.