The government may guarantee nearly $2 trillion in U.S. banks’ debt and deposit accounts for more than three years in an effort to break the crippling logjam in bank-to-bank lending.
That’s the equivalent of about 20 percent of the national debt, which recently blew past $10 trillion, and roughly 14 percent of U.S. gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services.
The temporary guarantees for banks by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are in addition to the new $250 billion plan announced by the government Tuesday to directly buy shares in U.S. banks.
















