Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said that he plans to use some of the government’s $700 billion bailout money to unveil a new loan facility that will issue credit cards, make student loans and finance car purchases. Meanwhile the government has said that the economy shrank at a 0.5 percent rate in the third quarter, meaning that he nation is almost surely in a recession.

Question: Have you tightened up your spending?

Today President-elect Barack Obama announced the leaders of his economic team and his plan to help turn around an economy that’s been struggling now for months. His team will include Timothy Geithner as secretary of the Treasury, Lawrence Summers as director of the National Economic Council and Christina Romer as chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisors.

This announcement comes on the heals of another government announcement that it must bail out yet another major bank -this time it’s Citigroup that needs the help.

President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday offered an outline of his economic recovery plan and jobs were the top priority. He referred to figures out this week showing that new home purchases in October were the lowest in 50 years, and that 540,000 new unemployment claims had been filed — the highest in 16 years.

American workers will rebuild the nation’s roads and bridges, modernize its schools and create more sources of alternative energy, creating 2.5 million jobs by 2011, Obama said in the weekly Democratic address, posted on his Web site.

“These aren’t just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis,” he said. “These are the long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long.”

Details of the plan are still being worked out by his economic team, Obama said, but he hopes to implement the plan shortly after taking office January 20.

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