At a news conference, Prime Minister Gordon Brown insisted that the crisis had begun in the United States. "This problem started in America with irresponsible actions and lending by some institutions," he said. "In some cases nobody actually knew what irresponsible lending was done."
As a result of the crisis, he said, "the global financial market has ceased to function."
He depicted the British measures as far more radical than had been forecast and farther reaching than America's $700 billion bailout.