WASHINGTON — President Bush and foreign financial officials displayed joint resolve Saturday to combat the unfolding financial crisis, hoping to calm investors whose panic has spread despite bold and accelerating government action.

Yet there was no concrete offer of new moves when Bush spoke on a Rose Garden stage just after daybreak, flanked by representatives from nearly a dozen nations and international organizations. The fresh message of the day was Bush's plea that nations work together to address the crisis, avoiding the go-it-alone protectionist trade strategies that worsened conditions during the Great Depression.

"In an interconnected world, no nation will gain by driving down the fortunes of another. We are in this together. We will come through it together," Bush said. "There have been moments of crisis in the past when powerful nations turned their energies against each other or sought to wall themselves off from the world. This time is different."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Bush's commitment to collaborative action was repeated and agreed to by every official and minister who took part in a private White House meeting before the statement. Participating in that session with the president were top officials from the Group of Seven powers — the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada — as well as from the European Union, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Bush did not mention any specific action that prompted his call. But Ireland recently moved to guarantee all bank deposits, triggering similar actions in Germany and other countries concerned that nervous depositors would move their bank accounts to Ireland.

The president barely referenced a significant new step from his administration — partial nationalization of some banks. After days of speculation this move was coming, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced late Friday night that the government would buy part ownership in an array of American banks.

President Hoover tried something like that in 1932 during the Great Depression. No detail was provided about how the new approach would work, only that it was similar to Britain's move to pour cash into its troubled banks in exchange for stakes in them. The U.S. government would use an unspecified portion of the $700 billion approved by Congress a week ago to purchase stocks in a wide variety of banks and other financial institutions.

The rescue program originally was sold to Congress and the public as a plan to buy mortgage-related loans from financial institutions. The goal was to remove troubled assets from those institutions' books and inspire them to restart more normal lending operations.