In a nutshell,Geithner promised a stringent “stress test” of banks’ balance sheets; more aid to banks through a new Financial Stability Trust; up to $1 trillion for a public-private partnership to buy banks’ bad real estate assets; up to $1 trillion to support student, auto, consumer, small business, and commercial-mortgage lending; and a major effort to lower the rates and monthly payments on home mortgages.

The biggest plus in Geithner’s plan is the sheer size of it. “It’s much better than Bush-Paulson because it’s owning up to the scale of the problem,” says Harvard University economist Kenneth Rogoff, referring to the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, devised by former President George W. Bush and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

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