Officials Confer to Prevent Market Crisis : Regulators: Few in the Administration express alarm about Friday’s selloff, but some lawmakers call for new curbs on stock volatility.

Bush Administration officials spent the day Saturday testing the waters among Wall Street executives in preparation for low-key discussions within the government today about what actions, if any, will be taken when the stock market resumes trading Monday.

Although Administration officials remained confident that Friday’s 190.58-point free fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average would not prove to be a harbinger of widespread economic dislocations, they conceded that it was a big enough jolt to warrant close monitoring and contingency planning.

Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady was on the telephone for most of the day with bankers, stockbrokers and other government officials, including members of the Federal Reserve Board, which shares authority with the Treasury in managing financial disruptions.

Brady was not available for comment, but key Treasury officials said the secretary planned to confer with Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan today in an effort to map out plans for dealing with any crisis that might arise after stocks begin trading Monday morning.

The official said that on the basis of its soundings on Saturday, the Administration continued to believe that the stock market’s slide was essentially a technical adjustment and was unlikely to result in a crash of the magnitude--a 508.32 drop in the Dow indicator--that occurred on Oct. 19, 1987.

Wall Street analysts have predicted that stock prices probably would slip somewhat further on Monday, particularly airline industry issues. But they said chances were good that the decline would come to a halt as soon as the market had shaken out.

Senior Treasury and Federal Reserve officials routinely update contingency plans for dealing with serious disruptions in the market. But officials stressed that each case is different and that no single set of procedures can be expected to apply without exception.

Federal Reserve Board officials have indicated they are prepared to move swiftly to inject additional liquidity into the nation’s banking system on Monday to prevent a run on the markets, as they did when the stock market crashed in 1987.

Senior Fed officials also were in touch Saturday with their counterparts in Japan and West Germany to pave the way for possible coordination of efforts by the world’s major central banks if the slide spreads to foreign markets.

There was no immediate indication whether such action would be necessary this time around. The market decline so far has been smaller than the 1987 collapse.

Although few Administration officials expressed extreme alarm about Friday’s decline, some lawmakers were calling for renewed efforts to tame the market’s occasional volatility.

Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said he would request from regulators a reconstruction of Friday’s trading. “This is the second heart attack, two years after the first,” said Markey, who chairs a House subcommittee that oversees the Securities and Exchange Commission. “It’s about time we made the changes necessary to avoid a third.”

Sen. Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said on the “CBS Evening News” that he believes the Senate’s decision to eliminate a proposed capital gains tax cut from this year’s budget reconciliation legislation “could accelerate the (market) downturn on Monday or Tuesday.”

New York Stock Exchange President Richard A. Grasso spoke by telephone Saturday with officials in Washington, and an exchange representative said no extraordinary steps were anticipated.

Staff writer James Bates in Los Angeles contributed to this story.