by Laura Conaway

The U.S. Treasury on Monday is expected to announce a plan for investing some $250 billion in American banks. Reports say Treasury will then alert Congress that it needs the $100 billion available to it under the $700 billion bailout act.

CNBC says the money will likely go to the nation's top nine banks, which seconds what we've been hearing. (The New York Times lists who's to get what.) Treasury, the Federal Reserve and FDIC will also move to insure more types of deposits and interbank lending.

The move to invest directly in banks is the capital or stock injection plan we've been telling you was tucked inside the Troubled Asset Relief Program. It comes as European nations announced a raft of similar measures this weekend.

The stock market, which has been racing around like a cat with a mousetrap on its tail, went right on up today. The TED Spread, which measures banks' willingness to lend to each other, remains miserably high at 4.57 percent; in normal times, it's below a single point.

Cool read: The Big Money rounds it up.