Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, attempted once more to soothe the world’s fractious markets, urging calm and patience while reassuring investors that Washington is movingly as swiftly as feasible to implement the $700 billion bailout for US banks under the Troubled Assets Relief Programme (TARP).

However, Mr Paulson also sought to dampen rising expectations that an even more sweeping global “grand plan” to stabilise the world financial system might emerge from Friday’s meeting of the Group of Seven leading economies, and a further “G20” meeting of the G7 with big emerging market nations on Saturday.

“We are moving as quickly as possible to organise and implement the most effective process possible,” the Treasury Secretary said on the US bailout.

He sounded a warning that “even with the new Treasury authorities, some financial institutions will fail”. The rescue scheme “doesn’t exist to save every financial institution for its own sake”, he added.

Adding that it would several weeks before any distressed assets could be bought up from banks under the Tarp scheme, he urged: “Patience is also needed because the turmoil will not end quickly and significant challenges remain ahead. Neither passage of this new law (the Tarp) nor the implementation of these initiatives will bring an end to immediate difficulties.”

Mr Paulson and his key international aide both pored cold water on speculation over a grand plan by the G7.

“When you look at the G7, we have very different economies of different sizes, financial systems with different needs,” the Treasury Secretary said. “I think it would not make sense to have identical policies. I think we are going to have different policies. The key thing is that we continue to work closely together, we continue to coordinate.”

David McCormick, the US Treasury Under-secretary, reinforced Mr Paulson’s caution that no grand plan was expected to emerge. “I am trying to think about what a global plan would look like because it seems to imply that there is a one size fits all for these challenges,” he said, adding that he saw no such likely approach.

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