by Laura Conaway

That $700 billion bailout gives the U.S. government great freedom to buy up troubled assets. So far, we've mostly talked about the government purchasing bad mortgages or bundles of mortgages known as mortgage-backed securities.

Today, the Federal Reserve took a different tack, snapping up commercial paper — the short-term loans that banks and other businesses use to float their daily operations. For the past few weeks, the commercial-paper market has all but been frozen.

Our NPR colleague Dina Temple-Raston takes a chilling look at the move. She writes:

In a sign that the Federal Reserve isn't convinced that the $700 billion financial rescue plan put in place last week will be enough to resurrect the morbid credit markets, the central bank said Tuesday that it would begin to buy unsecured short-term loans known as commercial paper.