WASHINGTON, Oct 10, 2008 (AFP) - The United States will start moving "as soon as we can" to inject capital into troubled banks as part of efforts to stem the global financial crisis, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Friday.

"We're going to do it as soon as we can do it and do it effectively," Paulson told journalists after a Group of Seven agreement on a joint action plan on the crisis.

The G7 plan said the economic powers would seek to ensure that banks "can raise capital from public as well as private sources, in sufficient amounts to re-establish confidence and permit them to continue lending to households and businesses."

Paulson on Friday confirmed that this plan is in motion in cooperation with the G7 and said any government stock purchase would be in non-voting shares.

"As we develop plans to purchase equity, as in the approach we are taking to broad mortgage asset purchases, we are working to develop a standardized program that is open to a broad array of financial institutions," Paulson said in a statement.

"Such a program would be designed to encourage the raising of new private capital to complement public capital. Consistent with the legislation, any equity the government purchases through a broadly available equity program would be on a non-voting basis, except with respect to the market standard terms to protect our rights as investors."

Such a move would follow similar action by British authorities, and would give the government special shares of the banks in exchange for helping boost badly needed capital in an effort to unclog credit markets.

Analysts and officials said there is a precedent in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation created during the Great Depression.