The Obama administration today formally unveiled details of its long-awaited plan to help cleanse banks and financial institutions of bad home loans and toxic securities, making a calculated gamble that partnering with private investors to buy the assets will stabilize the crisis while limiting the risk to taxpayers.

The plan, introduced by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at an early morning news conference, would use between $75 billion and $100 billion in federal financial rescue money to lure private investors to join with the government to buy up to $1 trillion in bad sub-prime mortgages, mortgage-backed securities and other troubled assets that are dragging down the balance sheets of financial institutions.

Geithner said the new Public-Private Investment Program would allow the government to share with private investors both the risks of acquiring the bad assets and the potential gains if they are bought at low-enough prices. That innovative idea was selected as a better alternative than having the government buy up all the assets itself or simply allowing banks to work through the problems on their own.

http://www.truthout.org/032309C

meanwhile …..

Embattled bank JPMorgan Chase, the recipient of $25 billion in TARP funds, is going ahead with a $138 million plan to buy two new luxury corporate jets and build "the premiere corporate aircraft hangar on the eastern seaboard" to house them, ABC News has learned.

The financial giant's upgrade includes nearly $120 million for two Gulfstream 650 planes and $18 million for a lavish renovation of a hangar at the Westchester Airport outside New York City.

"It's a remarkably boneheaded decision," said corporate watchdog Nell Minow, the editor and founder of The Corporate Library, a group that provides independent corporate governance research and analysis. "It's completely tone deaf."

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7146474&page=1