According to the Wall Street Journal, the following executives have been invited: Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America; Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase; Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs; John Mack, CEO of Morgan Stanley; and Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup.

Details of the meeting are unknown, but an anonymous source told the Journal Paulson is expected to discuss the government's plan to purchase equity directly from financial firms, a move taken to recapitalize banks and restore confidence in the markets.

Earlier in the day, Neel Kashkari, interim head of the new Office of Financial Stability, which will oversee the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, discussed details of the program. He said the Treasury would be using its full resources to ensure the program's success, and that it was developing seven policy teams to deal with different aspects of the rescue as quickly as possible.

"A program as large and complex as this would normally take months - or even years - to establish. We don't have months or years," Kashkari said. "Hence, we are moving to implement the TARP as quickly as possible while working to ensure high quality execution."

By Patrick McGee, This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it , edited by Sarah Sussman, This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

CEP Newswires - CEP News © 2008. All Rights Reserved. www.economicnews.ca

The Copying, Broadcast, Republication or Redistribution of CEP News Content is Expressly Prohibited Without the Prior Written Consent of CEP News.

A copy of CEP News disclaimer can be found at http://www.economicnews.ca/cepnews/wire/disclaimer.