Washington - Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Tuesday pledged to cut taxes and reform rules to help investors saving for retirement in a bid to jump-start an economy hard hit by the crisis in financial markets.

"We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight - waiting for our luck to change," the Arizona senator said in an attempt to distance himself from unpopular fellow Republican George W Bush.

"The hour is late and our troubles are getting worse. We have to act immediately. We have to change direction now. We have to fight."

The faltering US economy has become the key issue ahead of November 4 presidential elections amid a roller coaster course on Wall Street, a freeze of credit markets, the failure of several large financial firms and a 700-billion-dollar government bail-out plan designed to contain the mess.

Speaking to voters in the battleground state of Pennsylvania hours after the government said it would spend 250 billion dollars to take stock in banks, McCain vowed not to allow the government to become a permanent stakeholder in private enterprise.

"We're going to get government out of the business of bail-outs and equity stakes, and back in the business of responsible regulation," he said.

McCain's actions to restore investor confidence and get the economy moving would include a guarantee on all savings accounts regardless of size for six months and modifications to retirement accounts to allow seniors to keep their money invested until the markets recuperate.

He also pledged to cut taxes on businesses in a bid to encourage hiring, halve capital gains taxes on stocks and remove taxes from government unemployment benefits. He also reiterated his pledge to renegotiate home mortgages at the heart of the crisis.

The speech came a day after Democratic candidate Barack Obama unveiled his own updated economic plan calling for new measures to spur job growth and help homeowners threatened by foreclosure stay in their homes. Opinion polls released this week show Obama gaining ground with more voters trusting him to deal with the economic crisis.

The Obama campaign accused McCain's plan of not doing enough to help middle class Americans. "His trickle-down ideological recipes won't strengthen our economy and grow our middle class, but Barack Obama's pro-jobs, pro-family economic policies will," said Bill Burton, Obama's spokesman.

The Illinois senator on Monday called for a tax credit for businesses that create new jobs and other tax measures aimed at small businesses and the middle class. He also said he would seek a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures, which have hit record highs in the past year and severely damaged the balance sheets of banks, spurring the current financial crisis.

His plan also would allow investors to take money from retirement accounts without early withdrawal penalties and lend federal money to state and local governments hit by the credit crisis.

McCain called Obama's proposal to change restrictions on withdrawals from retirement accounts "an invitation to capital flight, and therefore to continued instability in the market, at a moment when exactly the opposite is needed."