UNITED States President Barack Obama?s economic team is pushing to complete a bank-rescue plan that can be twinned with the $825-billion stimulus package being negotiated with Congress to alleviate the rapidly deepening financial crisis.

While full details of the rescue haven?t been settled yet, people familiar with the deliberations said the package was likely to include a $50-billion-plus program to stem foreclosures, fresh injections of capital into the banks, and steps to deal with toxic assets clogging lenders? balance sheets.

Officials ?feel like they need to move quickly to provide some sense of calmness and assurance to the market that the government isn?t going to let this problem get out of hand,? said John Douglas, a partner at the Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker law firm and a former general counsel at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

In his inaugural address, Obama called for ?bold and swift? action to resolve the crisis that has cost the economy almost 2.6 million jobs last year, the most since 1945. Bank stocks sank yesterday, driving the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its worst-ever inauguration-day decline.

The president is set to meet with his economic advisers today. One option that may be gaining ground: coupling the establishment of a so-called bad bank to buy some toxic assets with government guarantees to limit losses on those that remain on banks? balance sheets.

The UK unveiled a 100-billion pound ($140-billion) bailout on Jan. 19 that included guaranteeing banks on losses from toxic assets. While Prime Minister Gordon Brown?s plan didn?t specifically call for a bad bank, it gave the Bank of England unprecedented power to buy securities in an effort to encourage lending.

In the US, the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are advocating a government-backed bad or ?aggregator bank? to acquire hundreds of billions of dollars of troubled securities now held by lenders.

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair has said that cash from the Troubled Asset Relief Program may help capitalize the bad bank and that commercial banks may kick in some money of their own. One possibility that has been discussed is issuing lenders some kind of stock in the new organization in return for their impaired assets. Bloomberg