Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Sunday called on Congress to move swiftly on the Bush administration's $700 billion proposal to bail out the financial system...
President Bush asked Congress on Saturday for the authority to spend as much as $700 billion to purchase troubled mortgage assets and contain the financial crisis.
The legislative proposal is the centerpiece of what would be the most sweeping economic intervention by the government since the Great Depression...
The plan would allow the Treasury to buy up mortgage-related assets from American based companies and foreign firms with a big exposure to these illiquid assets. The aim is for the government to buy the securities at a discount, hold onto them and then sell them for a profit...
The administration's proposal also requests that Congress authorize an increase to the nation's debt ceiling. Currently, it's set to rise to $10.6 trillion for fiscal year 2009 - which runs from October 2008 through September 2009. But the proposal requests that limit be increased to $11.315 trillion to allow for the purchases of mortgage-backed assets....
"We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, but remember this is not an expenditure, this is money that is being used to purchase illiquid mortgage assets that are very difficult to value," Paulson said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
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