Economic Crisis, Bailouts | featured news

Banks are finally beginning to lend, the big ones that is. Commercial and industrial lending is up this quarter 0.2% from the third quarter, according to Moody's Analytics. That might not sound like much, but it's the first quarterly increase in two years. This is great, right? After all, if banks are lending more to businesses, they can expand and begin to hire. That's true, but this trend reveals something else: the financial crisis has created an environment where big banks are getting bigger, as the small ones struggle.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said the government rescued American International Group Inc. to prevent a "catastrophic" blow to the U.S. economy, not to save any of AIG's counterparties.

Central bank will return the money to the Treasury; bank's unconventional efforts to prop up the economy created windfall for the government.

President Barack Obama singled out financial institutions for causing much of the economic tailspin and criticized their opposition to tighter federal oversight of their industry....

General Motors Corp. said it will cut 21,000 U.S. factory jobs by next year, phase out its storied Pontiac brand and ask the government to take more than half its stock in exchange for half of GM's government debt as part of a major restructuring that would leave current shareholders holding just 1 percent of the company.

General Motors Corp. posted a $9.6 billion fourth-quarter loss Thursday and said it burned through $6.2 billion of cash in the last three months of 2008.

House members want the eight big banks to increase their lending and explain what they are doing with the taxpayers’ money.

Obama's new Treasury chief favors aggressive use of all available tools to bolster the U.S. economy.

Japan plans to use public money to help the companies hardest hit by the financial crisis, while newly confirmed U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner vowed to act swiftly to rescue the U.S. economy.

President Barack Obama's top economic adviser would not rule out on Sunday that more money may be needed to stabilize the financial system as a deep recession increases banks' losses.