Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke met in Washington with their counterparts from the world's six other richest countries as a rout of financial markets showed no sign of letting up in the face of dramatic rescue efforts in the United States and abroad.

Stock prices hurtled downward in the United States, Europe and Asia on Friday, even as President George W Bush tried to reassure Americans and the world that the governments of the United States and other countries were dealing aggressively what has become a near panic.

A sign of how bad things have gotten: A drop of 128 points in the Dow Jones industrials was greeted with sighs of relief after the index had plummeted much further on previous days.

The week ended as the Dow's worst ever, with the index down an incredible 40.3 per cent since its record close almost exactly one year earlier, on October 9, 2007.

Investors suffered a paper loss of USD 2.4 trillion for the week, as measured by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 index, and for the past year the losses have totalled USD 8.4 trillion.

"We're in this together, and we'll come through this together," Bush declared at the White House as finance ministers and central bankers from the world's seven richest nations gathered nearby.

"Anxiety can feed anxiety, and that can make it hard to see all that's being done to solve the problem."

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrials, already down 21 per cent for the week, dropped nearly 700 points more in the opening minutes but made up much of that fresh loss in the last hour of trading. The index finished down 128 points for its worst week ever.

It was no better overseas. Britain's FTSE index ended below the 4,000 level for the first time in five years; Germany's DAX fell 7 per cent and France's CAC-40 finished down 7.7 per cent. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell 9.6 per cent, also hitting a five-year low.

For the week, the Nikkei lost nearly a quarter of its value. Russia's market never even opened.

Bush made it clear the United States must work with other countries to battle the worst financial crisis that has jolted the world economy in more than a half-century.

"We've seen that problems in the financial system are not isolated to the United States," he said. "So we're working closely with partners around the world to ensure that our actions are coordinated and effective."

The Dow dropped a little over 100 points while he was speaking.

Fear has tightened its grip on investors worldwide even as the United States and other countries have taken a series of radical actions including an unprecedented, coordinated interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve and other major central banks.