"This is not a small crisis that [a country] can inflate its way out of or wiggle its way out of. This is a systemic crisis," Boutros-Ghali said.
Washington has hosted a series of rolling finance meetings that started under different auspices on Friday -- some at the IMF, some at the World Bank and others under the umbrella of the G-7 or G-20. The sessions continue through the weekend.
A consensus seems to be emerging among participating officials that, whatever economic or political differences may exist among them, all of the countries must act aggressively and in concert on at least two key points: guaranteeing deposits in their banks and pumping government capital into faltering institutions.
Bush told the G-20 officials that the time may come for figuring out who is to blame, but the focus now should be on resolving the crisis.
On Friday, the G-7 countries -- the United States, Canada, Britain, Japan, France, Germany and Italy -- failed to draw up a precise action plan, but they did issue a set of five principles that countries should follow in developing their own policies.
Those principles included a commitment to "take decisive action and use all available tools to support systemically important financial institutions and prevent their failure." Among the steps countries should take, the statement said, is ensuring that banks have adequate capital and that bank deposit insurance programs are "robust."
IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the joint principles enshrine the idea that countries should set aside narrower national interests in the service of broader, global financial stability.
"Banks needing to be recapitalized will be recapitalized," he said.
Developing countries have expressed concerns about the massive number of government resources pouring into the financial centers of already wealthy countries. If the world enters a recession, they argue, their populations are the most vulnerable to higher prices for such necessities as food and fuel.
At the White House early in the day, Bush exhorted countries to act in concert or risk greater damage.
"We must ensure the actions of one country does not contradict or undermine the actions of another," Bush said in the White House Rose Garden, flanked by G-7 finance ministers. "In our interconnected world, no nation will gain by driving down the fortunes of another. We're in this together. We will come through it together."
Stock markets around the world have been extremely volatile even though the United States and other governments have unveiled a series of extraordinary programs designed to restore confidence to the credit markets.
The Dow Jones industrials fell 18.2% last week, the worst one-week percentage decline in the index's 112-year history.
"There have been moments of crisis in the past when powerful nations turned their energies against each other, or sought to wall themselves off from the world," Bush said. "This time is different."
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maura.reynolds@latimes.com
