U.S. Fed bailout

President Bush said the series of recent government interventions to help larger corporations were necessary but more comprehensive government action is needed, specifically in the housing sector. They’re calling it a troubled asset relief program. The details are still being worked out but it would amount to the government using taxpayer money to buy up bad mortgages and other bad debts from financial institutions and selling them off in an orderly way. The Treasury Secretary said the program would be big, in range of hundreds of billions of dollars, and target the underlying threat to the U.S. and global economy. He said now is not the time for a debate about how things got like this, but it is time for action. The Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee said while big questions remain, a consensus should be reached. It’s unlikely that new comprehensive regulations for Wall Street would be put in place before the Bush administration leaves office, so they’ll be left for the next U.S. president.