Finance officials from the world's top economic powers pledged Friday to take all action necessary to stem the worst financial crisis in more than a half-century.
The officials from the Group of Seven countries issued a five-point plan aimed at reversing a credit crisis that has unhinged Wall Street and markets around the globe. They pledged to take "decisive action and use all available tools."
Under the plan, the countries pledged to protect major banks and to prevent their failure. They also also committed to working to get credit flowing more freely again, support the efforts of banks to raise money from both public and private sources, bolster deposit insurance and revive the battered mortgage financing market.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke met with their counterparts from the world's six other richest countries as the rout of financial markets sped ahead in the face of dramatic rescue efforts in the U.S. and abroad.
Besides the United States, the G7 countries are Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada.
Fear has tightened its grip on investors worldwide even as the United States and other countries have taken a series of radical actions including unprecedented coordinated interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and other major central banks.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrials, already down 21% for the week, dropped nearly 700 points more in the opening minutes of trading but made up much of that fresh loss in the last hour. The index down 128 points for its worst week ever. Stock markets in Europe and Asis also took another plunge.
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