Read all about it in today’s newspapers…

NY Times Headline: $700 Bailout Is Sought for Wall Street in Vast Bailout
Daily News: Headline: Biggest Bailout Since the 1930’s.

This from the Times:

The Bush administration on Saturday formally proposed a vast bailout
of financial institutions in the United States, requesting unfettered
authority for the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in
distressed mortgage-related assets from the private firms.

The proposal, not quite three
pages long, was stunning for its stark simplicity. It would raise the
national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. And it would place no
restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual
reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented
power to buy and resell mortgage debt.

“This is a big package,
because it was a big problem,” President Bush said Saturday at a White
House news conference, after meeting with President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia. “I will tell our citizens and continue to remind them that
the risk of doing nothing far outweighs the risk of the package, and
that, over time, we’re going to get a lot of the money back.”