British Finance Minister Alistair Darling said today that governments, regulators and central banks around the world must act together to give stability to the financial system while market turmoil persists.
Mr Darling said financial and economic uncertainty was affecting all countries, but said a fall in the oil price yesterday was an encouraging sign.
"We need to take action internationally, and we are," he told BBC radio. "It means that central banks need to help - and yesterday you saw right across the world the American Fed, the ECB, our own Bank of England and Japan, all intervening."
"This is clearly a very difficult time," Mr Darling added. "I am confident that we will get through it."
Mr Darling said governments, central banks and regulator had already said, and would continue to make clear, that they were prepared to do everything that they possibly could to maintain stability in the financial system.
"We must, must, must act together to make sure that we tighten up the system so that we can try and reduce the likelihood of this sort of thing happening again in the future," he said.
Mr Darling was speaking after dramatic falls on global stock markets continued overnight in Asia, with markets in Japan and Hong Kong down 5 to 6 per cent amid widespread investor fear after US investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy.
Banking and financial stocks have been hit by a wave of selling, but Mr Darling suggested the way to begin to stem their falls was to ensure banks were open about their positions.
"We need to ensure that as far as we reasonably can, we get as much openness, banks declaring their positions, so that people can get more certainty, and are therefore more likely to put their money back into bank shares," he said.
"We need far more openness and transparency".