Darling Calls For Global Effort, Amid Further Market Turmoil

UK Chancellor Alistair Darling has called for a collaborative global effort to stabilise international markets, amid mounting financial pressures being felt across the world.

Mr Darling said governments, regulators and central banks should act jointly to combat the current worldwide market turmoil.

All countries have been affected by economic uncertainty, according to Mr Darling, who said he was encouraged by yesterday's fall in oil prices.

The Chancellor told the BBC: "We need to take action internationally, and we are.

"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."

Mr Darling stress this is "clearly a very difficult time", but argued he was "confident" that we would "get through it".

Governments, central banks and regulators have made a clear pledge to do everything they possibly can to retain a level of economic stability for all financial systems, according to Mr Darling.

"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.

Last night, Asia felt the effects of the US market tumble, following the collapse of American banking giant Lehman Brothers.

Investor fear sparked a 5-6% fall in Japanese and Hong Kong markets.

The markets have seen a rapid spate of selling in banking and financial stocks, however the Chancellor said banks could limit the damage by ensuring they are open about their position.

Mr Darling said: "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,

"We need far more openness and transparency."

(PR/JM)