President George W Bush expressed regret yesterday that the global financial crisis has cost jobs and shrinking retirement accounts and said he will support more government intervention if needed to ease the recession.

President George W Bush expressed regret yesterday that the global financial crisis has cost jobs and shrinking retirement accounts and said he will support more government intervention if needed to ease the recession.

"I'm sorry it's happening, of course," Bush said in an interview with ABC's World News. "Obviously I don't like the idea of people losing jobs. On the other hand, the American people got to know that we will safeguard the system."

The US economy fell into a recession in December 2007, the National Bureau of Economic Research reported yesterday. Many economists believe the current downturn will last until the middle of 2009 and will be the most severe slump since the 1981-82 recession.

On the war in Iraq, Mr Bush said the biggest regret of his presidency was the "intelligence failure" regarding the extent of the Saddam Hussein threat to the US. With the support of Congress, Bush ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, a decision largely justified on grounds that Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction. That later proved to be false.

"A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein," Mr Bush said. "That's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess."

Asked if he would have ordered the invasion if intelligence reports had accurately indicated that Saddam did not have the weapons, he replied: "You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate."

On the presidential election, Mr Bush called Barack Obama's victory a "repudiation of Republicans".

"I'm sure some people voted for Barack Obama because of me," said Mr Bush, who leaves office with low approval ratings. "I think most people voted for Barack Obama because they decided they wanted him to be in their living room for the next four years explaining policy. In other words, they made a conscious choice to put him in as president."

As he leaves office, Mr Bush said he felt responsible for the economic downturn because it is occurring on his watch, but he added: "I think when the history of this period is written, people will realise a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so," before he became president.

He said he would like to see "instant liquidity" in the markets given the extent of the financial rescue plan, yet he understands that fear has paralysed the markets. "Slowly but surely the system is becoming unthawed, and it's going to take time for the system to become unthawed," he said. "What the American people have got to know is we've taken the steps to unthaw it, which is the first step to recovery."

"It is hard for the average citizen to understand how frozen the system became and how over-leveraged the system became," he said.