Under the plan, unveiled by Democratic leaders, the Treasury Department would cut checks for the car companies as soon as next week. The proposal also calls for President Bush to name a "car czar" to manage a vast restructuring of the firms and restore them to profitability.

Democrats bent to the will of the president on several key demands, most notably in agreeing that the emergency funding would be drawn from an existing loan program aimed at promoting fuel-efficient technologies.

Still, the White House objected yesterday to several elements of the Democratic proposal, congressional aides said, including requirements that the car companies notify Washington of any transaction of more than $25 million and that they pull out of lawsuits against states seeking to enforce tougher tailpipe-emissions standards.

Under the proposal, the car companies would be required to submit detailed plans for restructuring by March 31, when they would be eligible for additional government assistance. The Bush administration was pressing to strengthen those provisions to make clear that only companies that were either financially viable or taking steps to achieve viability could receive more federal cash.

In a statement, White House press secretary Dana Perino said the two sides had "made a lot of progress in recent days" and that discussions were continuing over how to "help automakers restructure and achieve long-term viability."

"Long-term financing must be conditioned on the principle that taxpayers should only assist automakers executing a credible plan for long-term viability," Perino said.

Appearing briefly before reporters, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Democrats, too, are determined to force changes in the domestic auto industry, which had been losing customers to more nimble foreign competitors even before a deepening recession slashed demand for new cars to the lowest level in 25 years.

"Come March 31, it is our hope that there will be a viable automotive industry in our country with transparency and accountability to the taxpayer. We think that is possible," Pelosi said, adding that auto company executives, their employees, their shareholders and their network of local dealers all will be expected to make concessions.

"We call this a barbershop," Pelosi said. "Everyone is getting haircuts."

Talks continued late yesterday in Pelosi's Capitol Hill offices. Despite the administration's last-minute objections, both sides remained optimistic that a deal could be finalized and quickly presented to lawmakers for a vote.

"It is overwhelmingly likely that a bill will be on the president's desk by the end of the week," said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, whose staff was taking the lead in drafting the measure.

The government, still struggling to manage a severe financial crisis, unveiled two new programs Tuesday that will provide $800 billion to try to help unfreeze the market for consumer debt from home mortgages to credit cards.

The announcements by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department represented the latest modifications to the largest government bailout in history, a program designed to keep the troubled financial system from dragging the country into a deep and prolonged recession.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has been criticized for continually revising the focus of the government's response to the crisis.

Paulson on Tuesday defended all the changes, saying that there was no one response adequate by itself to deal with what he termed a once- or twice-in-a-century financial crisis. He said that was why the government was having to keep modifying its response.

"It is naive for any of us to think that when you are dealing with a situaiton of this magnitude that a bill could be passed or a single action taken to make all the issues go away," Paulson told reporters at a briefing on the new programs.

To try to increase the availability of home loans to borrowers, the Federal Reserve said it will buy up to $100 billion in direct obligations from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as the Federal Home Loan Banks. The Fed also will buy $500 billion in mortgage-backed securities, pools of mortgages that are bundled together and sold to investors.

The program on consumer debt will lend up to $200 billion to the holders of securities backed by various types of consumer loans. It will be supported by $20 billion of credit protection from the $700 billion bailout package that was enacted last month.

The government, while looking to reduce fear in the credit markets, is eager to see lenders like credit card companies resume more normal levels of lending to help stimulate the economy. Since September, when credit markets first froze, financial institutions have been hesitant to hand over money for fear they won't be repaid.

On Wall Street, the new government efforts provided an early lift to stocks, but the Dow Jones industrials were down about 10 points in midday trading.

Meanwhile, data released Tuesday provided further proof the country is almost certainly in the throes of a painful recession.

The Commerce Department's updated reading on the economy's performance showed gross domestic product shrank at a 0.5 percent annual rate in the July-September quarter, weaker than the 0.3 percent rate of decline first estimated a month ago, and the worst showing since the third quarter of 2001.

GDP measures the value of all goods and services produced within the U.S. and is considered the best barometer of the country's economic fitness.

Meanwhile, the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller national home price index released Tuesday tumbled a record 16.6 percent during the quarter from the same period a year ago. Prices are at levels not seen since the first quarter of 2004.

That, in turn, has made it harder for businesses and consumers to borrow.

Elsewhere, the New York-based Conference Board says its Consumer Confidence Index for November was 44.9, up from a revised 38.8 in October. Last month's reading was the lowest since the research group started tracking the index in 1967.

Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected the November reading to slip to 37.9. Still, this month's figure hovers around levels not seen since December 1974, with Americans' views on the economy the gloomiest in decades as they grapple with massive layoffs, slumping home prices and dwindling retirement funds.

Consumers nationwide are reeling from job losses, tanking investment portfolios and sinking home values. They are expected to hunker down further in the coming months, making it likely the economy will continue to shrink through the rest of this year and into 2009, more than fulfilling a classic definition of a recession: two straight quarters of economic contraction.

As bankers claw their way out of the credit crunch, they're likely to get a lot more curious about our ability to repay loans. To do that, they'll no doubt search for statistical correlations between financial risk and our behavior in different realms—as shoppers, students, even drivers.

Indeed, quantitative analysts in major banks and researchers at credit risk companies are hard at work looking for ways to understand borrowers better. The logical first step is to pore over more of our data. Clark Abrahams, chief risk officer at SAS, a large software company that creates analytic programs for the banking industry, suggests lenders may one day take into account lots of nontraditional metrics, such as whether the borrower has a good reputation on eBay (EBAY) or pays cell-phone bills on time before deciding whether to extend credit.

At first blush, it may seem odd that banks need more data on borrowers. After all, mortgage bankers and credit-card companies feasted on financial data during the lending spree that helped inflate the housing bubble. Lenders studied individuals' borrowing and payment patterns and stuffed mailboxes with microtargeted pitches for new loans and credit cards. But they focused their analysis on the borrowers' appetite for credit—not on people's ability to afford it or the risk that they would default. New risk models, analysts say, are sure to call for more financial data, including revenue projections for each borrower. In other words, they'll want to know more about how much we make and how we spend it.

Ranking You on Responsibility

Already, marketers, advertisers, and political consultants are harvesting mountains of data about people and building sophisticated mathematical models to predict their behavior. "If they're smart, [bankers] will be using these techniques to figure out each customer's risk, and to give them customized offers," says Dave Morgan, founder of Tacoda, a behavioral targeting advertising company bought last year by Time Warner's (TWX) AOL.

A hot spot of this type of data study is at the San Rafael (Calif.) research labs of Fair Isaac (FIC), creator of the widely used FICO credit risk scores. In the short term, Fair Isaac is sifting through financial data to calculate not only each borrower's risk, but also how much debt each one can take on.

Looking further ahead, Fair Isaac predicts that based on analysis of our data, we'll each have scores that can predict far more than our financial behavior. Fair Isaac research fellow Larry Rosenberger speculates that one day, each of us will be scored for broad values such as "responsibility." Such a score, still years away, could be used to appraise a person's worthiness for a whole range of benefits, from housing loans to employment in a nursery school to rates on car insurance. Colleges might even find it useful in admissions decisions.

Looking for a Broader Read

And how would data-crunching companies come up with such scores? That's where new sources of data come in. According to Fair Isaac CEO Mark Greene, research indicates that "bad people are bad people are bad people." In other words, their behavior in one domain predicts what they might do in another. People who get in traffic accidents and don't pay their taxes on time, Greene says, "are often bad credit risks."

This means that more of our lives—our school records, for example, or claims made on insurance policies—could provide the data for broader responsibility scores.

Already, a number of industries have used Fair Isaac's FICO credit risk score for a broader read on a person's responsibility. The FICO score is based on limited data regarding credit and payment history. But it turned out to be a predictor for auto and home insurance claims. And recently Rosenberger was stunned to see a study pointing to a new correlation: People who pay their bills on time seem more likely to stick to exercise regimens at the health club. Could losing weight boost a person's responsibility score?

What's Your eBay Status?

This type of scoring may sound menacing. What's to stop banks from using nontraditional statistics to unearth measures that divide society ethnically and regionally, leading to new forms of discrimination, so-called red-lining. Let's say that analysts find that people who get new treads on car tires default on loans more often than those who buy new tires. Chances are, most of those economical drivers make less money and live in low-income neighborhoods. If so, the behavior may point to a demographic grouping. "We have to ask ourselves as a society [whether] we want to be making those calls," Abrahams says.

For now, reaching beyond standard financial statistics remains a research project. Use of "responsibility" scores, for one, will depend on privacy rules and regulations that societies develop, Fair Isaac says.

What's more, some of these new scores and metrics could prove helpful to customers. In a climate of tight credit, banks may be reluctant to lend to those who lack traditional credit histories. Incorporating new data, from school grades to one's status on eBay, could open doors for first-time borrowers.

But chances are, banks will also use these new sources of data to figure out the rest of us, too

Lifeline for Automakers Dangles Just Out of Reach

A $25 billion loan program rushed through Congress to revive the nation's ailing domestic auto industry may not deliver any money to Detroit for more than a year, federal officials said, prompting concern that the cash may come too late to prop up one of the country's most important manufacturing sectors.

In recent days, auto industry representatives and lawmakers from Michigan, Kentucky and other states where auto plants employ tens of thousands of workers have begun clamoring to pry the funds loose, prodding the Bush administration and questioning the reasons for the delay. Federal officials have said it would take months to finalize the rules for distributing funds.

The loan program has emerged as a lifeline as the global financial crisis has made it more difficult for people to get loans, sending car sales plummeting to a 15-year low. In response, General Motors and Chrysler have discussed merging or forming an alliance in hopes of arresting their decline. On Monday, billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian began selling off his stake in Ford at a large loss, adding to worries about the industry's prospects.

Both presidential candidates have urged the Bush administration to speed release of the loans. Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), the Democratic candidate, said at a rally last week in Ohio that if he were president, "I would call in the secretary of Energy and say 'get this thing moving' because these companies need help now."

The loan package, the largest government subsidy for the auto industry since the 1979 Chrysler bailout, is intended to aid production of more fuel-efficient cars. During the gas crisis of the 1970s, Asian and European automakers capitalized on America's growing appetite for smaller cars. Since then, the Big Three have slipped and continue to lose market share to Toyota, Honda and other foreign brands.

Retooling has become more difficult as the financial crisis has frozen credit markets. Earlier this month, J.D. Power and Associates said the global market for autos may experience an "outright collapse" in 2009.

"It's critical to have a direct loan program, and it's equally important to infuse that money into the industry as quickly as possible," GM spokesman Greg Martin said.

To qualify for the loans, automakers must prove they can build vehicles at least 25 percent more fuel efficient as they work toward meeting new standards of at least 35 miles per gallon by 2020. Suppliers are also eligible for the loans.

Although the bill doesn't restrict the loans to the Big Three, it directs the money to facilities built at least two decades ago.

"It was craftily done to keep out Japanese," said George Hoffer, economics professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. "None of the Japanese plants are 20 years old."

The Big Three all have plans to move fuel-efficient cars onto the market. Chrysler recently introduced three electric car prototypes with the promise of bringing one to market in 2010. Ford is retooling its large truck and SUV plants to build small cars and aims to double its hybrid vehicle production and lineup in 2009. GM has been pushing its Chevy Volt as the first mass-marketed, plug-in hybrid vehicle.

Congress approved the money last month and directed the Energy Department to write regulations for the program, including the interest rate for the loans, by the end of November. A day after the measure passed the House, however, Energy officials issued a statement vowing to "expedite" their actions, but expressing "significant doubts about whether distribution of loans by January 2009 is realistic."

"Because there are a number of legal and administrative requirements with which the Department must comply, such as the National Environmental Policy Act, we anticipate it could take at least 6 to 18 months or more, after necessary funds are appropriated, before [the] loans could be issued and funds disbursed," it said.

In addition to making sure any new facilities comply with environmental regulations -- a process that could take months -- Energy officials said they must abide by the Congressional Review Act, which prevents a regulation from being implemented until 60 days after the next Congress convenes in January.

"Congress had the opportunity to waive these requirements to speed up the process, but to date, has chosen not to," said Healy Baumgardner, an Energy spokeswoman. "Congress set a deadline of 60 days for DOE to issue regulations governing this new program, not for the loans to be made."

The delay outraged auto-state lawmakers in both parties. "It's inexcusable and inexplicable that they cannot get these loan guarantees out there faster," said Nate Bailey, a spokesman for Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.), whose suburban Detroit district is home to Chrysler's headquarters.

This month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) joined the clamor. On behalf of more than 2,000 workers at a Ford plant in Louisville, McConnell wrote Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman to ask that the agency "comply with the guidelines in the bill," said McConnell spokesman Don Stewart.

Is a $25 billion loan enough? By many estimates, it'll cost all automakers, foreign companies included, $100 billion to meet the new efficiency standards in 2020.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said he is considering a push to include an additional $25 billion in an economic stimulus package that could come before Congress as soon as next month. But sources in the industry and Congress said more money would do little good unless it is released quickly.

While waiting, some automakers are running low on cash. Last month GM's domestic sales were down 18 percent from a year ago. Burning through more than $1 billion a month, GM posted a net loss of $15.5 billion in the second quarter. Ford's sales dropped 34 percent, and it posted a second-quarter net loss of $8.7 billion. Chrysler, privately owned, does not report financial information. It had a 25 percent slump in sales through September.

Reports of Chrysler combining with GM or forming alliances with Japan's Nissan Motor and France's Renault continue to swirl.

On Monday, Tracinda Corp., Kerkorian's investment arm, sold 7.3 million shares in Ford for an average $2.43 a share. Tracinda said it intended to sell its remaining 133.5 million shares.

Ford shares yesterday closed at $2.17, down 16 cents or 6.9 percent. The value of Kerkorian's stake in Ford has declined to less than $300 million from about $1 billion earlier this year.