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Bush seeks to reassure Americans in face of crisis

"In the short term, we'll continue to face challenges," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "But in the long run, Americans have reason to be confident."

The president insisted that the United States has "the strongest and most resilient economy in the world.

"When we have faced difficult tests in the past, the American people have always risen to meet them," he said. "And that is exactly what we're going to do again."

The comments came after global stock markets went into freefall Friday as panicked investors found no place to hide, even though Wall Street managed to stem the losses in a stomach-churning session of ups and downs.

Some markets plunged 10 percent in the worst performance since the 1987 stock crash as part of a global meltdown that began with Tokyo's 9.6 percent nosedive.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average saw early losses of as much as 700 points, and two sudden spurts into positive territory before closing down 128.00 points (1.49 percent) at 8,451.19.

It came at the end of a vicious week of selling that sent the Dow and S&P indexes tumbling 18 percent.

Bush said, however, that the losses were "driven by uncertainty and fear." He assured that the US government was acting -- and will continue to act -- to resolve this crisis and restore stability to the markets.

He mentioned among the most recent actions the hundreds of billions of dollars injected into the banking system, rigorous enforcement actions launched by the Securities and Exchange Commission and efforts to help homeowners refinance their mortgages.

On Saturday, Bush met with the G7 finance ministers for crisis talks attended by the IMF and World Bank leaders, and said that all agreed the world financial meltdown required "a serious global response."