Neither the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund or the Group of Seven nations have the authority to handle the crisis, which looks increasingly like a global recession is under way, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

"Most of the responses will be national. For all the institutions we have, we don't have the right institutions to do this," Director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics Fred Bergsten said.

The $700 billion economic bailout package signed into U.S. law Friday was frequently described as "massive" before banks in Europe began to fail this week, the Times reported.

Suddenly, the "massive" bailout package is dwarfed by the spreading turmoil. Banks in Italy, Iceland, Belgium and Ireland were in trouble this week and France technically entered into recession conditions.

"Taxpayers won't agree to bail out the banking system of other countries," said Thomas Mayer, the chief European economist at Deutsche Bank. "Not even in Europe, where you have a neutral framework, could you get people to cooperate on a joint effort," he said.