ECONOMIC MELTDOWN, PART 1: The global response, by James Cusick

Gordon Brown has demanded the "boldest" united global action to tackle last week's plunge in stock markets around the world as failing banking systems threatened to turn the credit crisis into re-run of the Great Depression.

A "global problem" said the prime minister, "requires a global solution". The New York Times, on the week Wall Street saw its worst crash since the 1930s, put it simply: "We are all in this together."

What started as crisis inside the burst bubble of the US housing market has seen fall-out across the world, exposing the mistakes in banking deregulation that have led to capital markets freezing up and becoming scared of what might be round the corner.

The fall last month of investment banking giant Lehman Brothers in the United States was the catalyst for the accelerating collapse. Money markets, already damaged, have virtually put themselves into hibernation. So how to wake them up?

If there is to be a global solution, it could have its start in Washington this weekend. Officials from the G7 industrial nations have held talks and come up with a list of good intentions.

The annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank also takes place in Washington this weekend - a global financial rescue plan is now the priority on their agenda. But if that meeting breaks up tonight with nothing concrete on offer, the opening of the markets this week could mean things get even worse.