Want to buy a bank?

Or rather, shares in a bank? How about a couple thousand banks? Because you're about to:

The Bush administration is expected to take stakes in the nation's top financial institutions as part of a wide-ranging effort to restore confidence to the battered banking system, following similar moves by European governments that sent global stock markets soaring.

[I object to this wording. The "Bush administration" isn't taking stakes in a damn thing. The Bush administration will cease to exist in three months. The United States government is the stakeholder. -ed.]

As part of its new plan, the government is set to buy preferred equity stakes in nine top financial institutions, according to people familiar with the situation. It's unclear how much would be invested in each institution. The move is designed to remove any stigma that might come with a government investment.

Banks receiving government funds include Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank of New York Mellon.

Not all of the banks involved are happy with the move, but agreed under pressure from the government.

The new plan is designed to bolster bank balance sheets by providing new capital, removing rotten assets and taking new steps to make sure they have access to the funds they use to operate. All told, the moves are designed to get money flowing through the system so that banks will lend to companies, consumers and each other.

The initiatives, which will likely supersede many of the government's previous efforts, ensure that the U.S. banking sector will be tied to the federal government for years to come. They are being formulated jointly by the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

One central plank of these new efforts is a plan for the Treasury to take approximately $250 billion in equity stakes in potentially thousands of banks, according to people familiar with the matter, using funds approved by Congress through the $700 billion bailout bill.

In addition, the FDIC is expected to temporarily extend its guarantee of bank deposits to include certain new funds raised by banks and thrifts for three years. That would be an aid to lenders that have had a hard time raising capital without government assistance.

Other moves could include temporary loan guarantees aimed at helping banks borrow the money they need to do business. Officials are still working through how such a plan would work.

All told, the program would put the guarantee of the government behind much of the plumbing of American financial markets, a step that would have appeared inconceivable a few months ago. But the seizure in credit markets and last week's plunging stock markets forced policy makers around the world to shift gears.

Incidentally, on the topic of stock markets, I was struck by this handy WSJ chart of the Dow Jones average over the last 12 months:



Today's big rally is nice, but, um, it's still been a rough year. And nobody is quite sure what's going to happen next.