Global finance ministers kept searching for ways to tackle the unfolding financial crisis, turning their attention to its effects on rapidly developing countries and poor nations at risk of being swept up in the turmoil.
President Bush and the world's financial leaders sought to display unity Saturday as a way to calm investors whose panic has spread despite bold and accelerating government action.
The crisis dominated discussions at the meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized nations and the annual sessions of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Many participants spoke in unusually somber tones of the need for action.
The talks shifted Sunday to the World Bank and its policy-setting committee led by Mexican Finance Minister Agustin Carstens and World Bank President Robert Zoellick, a former U.S. diplomat and trade negotiator.
Zoellick said 28 countries facing the twin shocks of rising food and fuel prices are likely to receive no help from developed countries because of the global financial crisis. "For the poor, the costs of the crisis could be lifelong," he said.
Bush, after meeting Saturday with finance ministers from the world's richest countries, vowed anew that his administration was doing everything possible to halt the biggest market disruption since the Great Depression.
Accompanied by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, he participated for about 25 minutes in a discussion with the Group of 20, which includes rich nations as well as major developing countries such as China, Brazil and India.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto said, Bush acknowledged the problem began in the United States, but that "we're all in this together" the financial turmoil was spreading globally. "We take this seriously and we want to work with you," Bush assured the ministers, according to Fratto.
In a joint statement the G-20 finance officials pledged to work together "to overcome the financial turmoil, and to deepen cooperation to improve the regulation, supervision and the overall functioning of the world's financial markets."
Other speakers at a policy meeting of the IMF echoed Bush in emphasizing the need for countries to work together to address the crisis, avoiding the go-it-alone projectionist trade strategies that worsened conditions during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
"The depth and systemic nature of the crisis call for exceptional vigilance, coordination and readiness to take bold action," the IMF said in its joint statement. That statement, in an unusual move, repeated verbatim all of the commitments made in a G-7 statement Friday night. The G-7 groups the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
"There is a resolve in the international community that this crisis will be resolved, that no tools will be spared to address its ramifications," said Youssef Boutros Ghali, Egypt's finance minister and the new chairman of the IMF's policy panel.
At an earlier Saturday meeting with the ministers at the White House, Bush said "no nation will gain by driving down the fortunes of another." He cautioned against countries that might seek "to wall themselves off from the world" by taking unilateral actions.
"We are in this together. We will come through it together," said Bush in the White House Rose Garden, flanked by representatives from G-7 nations, the IMF, World Bank and European Union.
He did not mention any specific action that prompted his concern. Ireland recently moved to guarantee all bank deposits, touching off similar actions in Germany and other countries concerned that nervous depositors would move their bank accounts to Ireland.
Officials in Europe prepared for a meeting Sunday of the leaders of the 15 countries using the euro currency. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkosy said Saturday they opposed the creation of a common financial rescue fund for Europe.