WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush is bringing presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain into negotiations on a $700 billion rescue of Wall Street as Democrats and Republicans near agreement on a bailout plan with more protections for taxpayers and new help for distressed homeowners.

Senior lawmakers and Bush administration officials have cleared away key obstacles to a deal on the unprecedented rescue, agreeing to include widely supported limits on pay packages for executives whose companies benefit.

WASHINGTON (AP) — John McCain and Barack Obama say presidential politics should have no role in the government's efforts to save the crippled financial system. Yet, each is playing his own politics toward the same goals — showing leadership during crisis, getting credit for any solutions, and, ultimately, winning the presidency.

The latest example: a debate over whether the candidates should debate Friday.

McCain called for his Democratic rival to agree to a postponement until Congress agrees on a $700 billion government plan to rescue banks from enormous debt, saying, "We are running out of time."

Obama rebuffed his GOP rival, saying the next president needs to "deal with more than one thing at once."

Correction Appended

Last week, Wall Street experienced its most severe credit crisis since the Great Depression. Several long-standing monetary institutions, including investment banks Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, and American International Group, crashed, and the Dow Jones Industrial average fell over 800 points by mid-week before rebounding significantly on Thursday and Friday.

NEW YORK (AP) — Elation in the financial markets over the $700 billion bank bailout plan evaporated Monday and was replaced by all-too-familiar anxiety, pummeling stocks and sending oil prices to their biggest one-day gain.

Worries that the rescue package would cost too much, drive up inflation, swell the already-bloated deficit and hurt the ailing economy also led global investors to flee the U.S. dollar.

The Dow Jones industrials lost 372 points, wiping out the gains the index made Friday after administration officials and congressional leaders promised swift action to get bad debt off the books of banks and end the financial crisis.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The economy could suffer a massive hangover from the government's efforts to rescue the financial system in the form of a soaring debt burden. But the alternatives look infinitely worse.

The $700 billion the administration is seeking from Congress as the upper bounds of what it will need to take a mountain of bad loans off the books of financial firms is certainly an eye-popping figure.

To get the funds to buy up the bad mortgage loans that have threatened to bring the financial system to its knees, the government will have to borrow. And that borrowing will come at a time when the federal budget deficit is already soaring.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Struggling to stave off financial catastrophe, the Bush administration on Friday laid out a radical bailout plan with a jawdropping price tag — a takeover of a half-trillion dollars or more in worthless mortgages and other bad debt held by tottering institutions.

Relieved investors sent stocks soaring on Wall Street and around the globe. The Dow-Jones industrials average rose 368 points after surging 410 points the day before on rumors the federal action was afoot.

A grim-faced President Bush acknowledged risks to taxpayers in what would be the most sweeping government intervention to rescue failing financial institutions since the Great Depression. But he declared, "The risk of not acting would be far higher."

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Thursday he would fire Securities and Exchange Chairman Christopher Cox if he were president, accusing the former GOP congressman of betraying the public's trust.

McCain criticized President Bush's choice to lead the federal agency that regulates U.S. stocks and securities as he and Democratic rival Barack Obama tried to win over voters anxious to hear how the next president would prevent the sort of financial tremors that have shaken the financial industry this week.

Economic issues traditionally favor Democrats and were expected to be especially potent for Obama in an election cycle that follows eight years of a Republican White House and a Congress usually dominated by the GOP.

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street rallied in a stunning late-session turnaround Thursday, shooting higher and hurtling the Dow Jones industrials up 400 points following a report that the federal government may create an entity that will take over banks' bad debt.

A report that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is considering the formation of an entity like the Resolution Trust Corp. that was set up during the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s left investors ebullient. Investors hoped a huge federal intervention could help financial institutions jettison bad mortgage debt and stop the drain on capital that has already taken down companies including Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.