President Bush on Tuesday urged Saudi Arabia and other members of OPEC to consider the strain the high cost of oil was having on the American economy, addressing an issue that has begun to color the last year of his presidency and dominate the presidential election campaign.

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Speaking to a group of Saudi entrepreneurs and later to reporters, Mr. Bush expressed concern about the economy in some of his starkest language yet, saying that rising oil costs and gasoline prices were causing hardship for American families. He vowed to raise the issue with the Saudi leader, King Abdullah, during a meeting and dinner at the king’s lush horse farm in the desert outside of Riyadh, the capital. 

“My point to His Majesty is going to be, when consumers have less purchasing power because of high prices of gasoline — in other words, when it affects their families, it could cause this economy to slow down,” the president said in an expansive interview summarizing his eight-day trip to the Middle East. “If the economy slows down, there will be less barrels of oil purchased.” 

It was unclear whether Mr. Bush’s entreaties alone would have any significant effect on the price of oil, because, as the president acknowledged, demand continues to rise faster than supplies, especially in expanding markets in China and India, as well as the United States.

The world's leading supplier of oil maintained Tuesday that it will not boost production simply to ease pressure on prices, despite President Bush's warnings here that rising oil prices jeopardize the American and world economies. 

The Saudi oil minister's apparent rebuff of Bush's plea for increased production, in a nation that controls one-quarter of the world's known oil reserves, was a rough spot in an otherwise smooth two-day visit for Bush, who arrived in the U.S.-allied kingdom Monday to discuss a $20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia and the need to contain any regional threats from Iran.

Stocks plummeted Friday as fears erupted ahead of next week's bank earnings that the financial sector's troubles with bad credit are far from over. Investors also remain worried that the economy is in recession, as consumers hampered by fallen home prices and high costs pare back spending. 

For the year: 

The Dow is down 658.52, or 4.96 percent.
The S&P is down 67.33, or 4.59 percent.
The Nasdaq is down 212.34, or 8.01 percent.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke yesterday gave the clearest indication yet that the central bank will move aggressively to cut interest rates to try to prevent a serious economic downturn.  

The Fed has cut the short-term interest rate it controls three times, for a total of 1 percentage point, since September in an effort to keep a crisis in the housing and financial markets from spreading into the broader economy. In recent weeks, evidence has mounted that the economy is slowing anyway.  

In a speech in Washington, Bernanke said that in light of that recent negative economic news, "additional policy easing may well be necessary." He added that Fed policymakers "stand ready to take substantive additional action as needed to support growth and provide adequate insurance against downside risks."

The more-than-$30-a-barrel increase in oil prices since September alone has had all the negative effects of a tax increase — one big enough to outweigh any likely stimulus. 

"The price of oil rising even from $80 to $100 a barrel is like adding $150 billion in taxes. It's quite a wallop," said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economics professor and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. 

Moreover, he said, "it's worse than a tax increase because the money is going to Saudi Arabia and Russia rather than the U.S. government." 

Higher oil prices not only slow growth but also add to inflation, raising the specter of stagflation like that of the late 1970s. 

"Energy price increases, especially now that energy once again is becoming an ever-larger part of consumer spending and business costs, are both recessionary and inflationary," said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at Decision Economics. That, he said, makes higher oil prices "a very bad kind of tax increase. They add to costs and can be part of an upward spiral of price inflation, which possibly feeds back into wage inflation and more price inflation."

Telecommunications carriers shut down some covert surveillance lines established by the FBI because the bureau failed to make timely bill payments, a Justice Department review found Thursday. 

In five of the bureau's 56 field offices, an audit by the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General found hundreds of delinquent invoices, potentially threatening the integrity of undercover investigations and resulting in an undisclosed amount of lost evidence.