Feds To Become Bank Owners

The federal government will buy stock in American banks for the first time since the Great Depression, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Friday in the latest dramatic effort to reverse a global financial panic.
“This is a period like none of us has ever seen before,” declared Paulson at a rare Friday evening news conference. He said the government program to buy stock in private U.S. financial firms will be open to a broad array of institutions, including banks, in an effort to help them raise desperately needed cash.
The administration received the authority to take such direct action in the $700 billion economic rescue bill that Congress passed and President Bush signed last week.