US Government Takes Columbus Day to Get Down to Work

Normally a day for government offices and banks to take the day off, this Columbus day was all about a different type of recovery. The US stock market and Treasury department seemed to have picked today to spark notions of a financial crisis recovery.

The US market rallied surging the Dow up over 800 points, nearly 10 percent. Bouncing back from losing nearly 12 percent of it's value in the preceding 14 days.

Meanwhile, the Treasury Department got down to business on two fronts.

Secretary Paulson called together the heads of major financial institutions. Taking advantage of a congregation of banking elite scheduled to attend meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Secretary Treasury called a sidebar. Expected to attend today's 3:00 pm ET meeting was Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, and Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit.

While earlier in the day Interim Assistant Secretary of Treasury, Neel Kashkari dubbed the "bailout czar" gave his 10 day update on the implementation status of the $700 billion Congressional rescue legislation.

The highlights of this briefing primarily touched on objectives, a recap of the tools made available by Congressional action, expected organizational architecture, current recruitment of key positions, procurement, oversight management, and compliance.

Included in the days news, and certainly contributing to the market rally was the finalization of the Morgan Stanley/Mitsubishi UFG deals and Prime Minister Gordon Brown moving forward on the capital injection plan for British financial institutions.