Federal Bailout May Include Credit Card, Loan Companies

Nation: I think we have covered everyone but the actual taxpayers who are funding this locust plague.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said today his priority for the $700 billion bailout program will be to bolster banks and consumer lenders, such as credit card, student loan and car loan companies, rather than supporting other struggling industries. Paulson said officials are also seeking ways to help the nation's struggling homeowners, but he offered no new plan for how the government money might be used to stem the foreclosure crisis. Some of the existing proposals for homeowners, he warned, amounted to a subsidy or spending program, while Treasury's program involves "investment, not spending." Notably absent from his list of priorities were the nation's automakers, or any other industry beyond banks and other lenders. The announcement follows weeks in which representatives of the auto industry and other fields, as well as groups representing homeowners, have made a pitch for aid from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Paulson was given broad authority under the legislation to determine how to spend the money.