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Sen. Dodd is backing a bill that would allow the FDIC to borrow up to $500 billion from the government.

NEW YORK (Fortune) - The government is bracing for a big bank failure.

A bill introduced in Congress would give the FDIC, the agency that stands behind Americans' bank deposits, temporary authority to borrow as much as $500 billion from the government to shore up the deposit insurance fund.

The bill - the Depositor Protection Act of 2009, backed by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn. and Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho –wouldn't change the status of individual bank accounts, which through the end of this year are insured up to $250,000.

But the Dodd-Crapo bill acknowledges what the financial markets have been signaling for the past month - that the government must take the lead in a costly cleanup of the mess in the financial sector.

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A Chrysler 300C, like the one Obama drove before his campaign.

NEW YORK (Fortune) – One of the least explored personal sides to our new president is the amount of gasoline in his veins. We know all about his affection for the basketball court and his tendency every now and then to sneak out for a cigarette. But we've heard very little about what drove him to acquire one of the least politically-correct cars on the planet: a Chrysler 300C. With its high torque and horsepower, voracious appetite for fuel and gangsta car persona, it is hardly the kind of vehicle you'd expect a consensus-building politician to drive. But those are Obama's wheels.

Or were. During the campaign he sold the 300C in favor of a hybrid Ford Escape, and as president of the United States, he won't be getting into the driver's seat very often – unless he's at a military base or some other secure location where he can let loose. He'll be spending all his time in the back seat of an armor-plated Cadillac.

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