WASHINGTON The Bush administration plans to spend an initial $250 billion of the $700 billion bailout buying stock in private banks, greatly expanding protections for the U.S. financial system out of deep concern for the faltering economy, industry and government officials said Monday night. President Bush planned to announce ...

WASHINGTON Big banks started falling in line Tuesday behind a rejiggered bailout plan that will have the government forking over as much as $250 billion in exchange for partial ownership putting the world's bastion of capitalism and free markets squarely in the banking business.

... action of that kind in the Fed's history. There were some signs that credit problems were improving a bit. Bank-to-bank lending rates fell for a sixth straight day on Monday. Demand for Treasury bills, regarded as the world's safest investment ...

... Treasury bills and the interest rates banks charge each other have both fallen back to late-September levels. Bank-to-bank lending rates fell sharply overnight. The London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, on three-month loans in dollars ...

... as part of the government's financial rescue package. The program is meant to break the crippling logjam in bank-to-bank lending by guaranteeing the new debt in the event of payment default by the issuing bank. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones industrials ...

NEW YORK (AP) Wall Street put a stop to a terrifying decline and stormed higher Friday as President-elect Barack Obama appeared ready to tap the chief of the New York Federal Reserve as the next treasury secretary and hand him the herculean task of righting the U.S. financial system.