The economic calendar this week isn’t particularly exciting, but coming off the pain inflicted on the markets last week, that could be a good thing. The market will have its hands full with earnings season starting up again, so a full week of reports could have been dangerous.

Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) Friday agreed to buy all of Wachovia Corp. (WB) for about $15 billion in stock, however, Citigroup Inc. (C), which had already agreed to buy Wachovia’s banking operations, immediately issued a protest that could jeopardize the deal.

Do government bailouts in times of banking crises work? Crises like this are manageable. They’re expensive and painful to resolve, but even more expensive and painful when left to fester.

With evidence mounting by the day that the banking industry may be in deeper than it admits, many investors are wondering what the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) actually does and how it will protect them.

Eli Outbids Bristol; Carmax Crashes; IBM Could Miss Estimates; Micron’s Loss; Cereal’s Sugar High; Canada Drives Toyota

The U.S. Senate last night (Wednesday) passed a $700 billion banking-sector bailout package, and will now watch as the House of Representatives reviews the inducement-laden pact. The House rejected an earlier version of this bill on Monday.

General Electric Co. (GE) said yesterday (Wednesday) that it will sell “at least” $12 billion in common shares to investors, and another $3 billion in preferred stock to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.A, BRK.B), making GE the latest U.S. giant that’s been forced to raise capital in recent weeks.

In a move that will reverberate from Wall Street to Main Street, the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday (Monday) voted to reject a compromise $700 billion banking-bailout bill, an act of stunning defiance that eradicated $1.2 trillion in shareholder wealth as U.S. stocks endured their biggest one-day point loss in history.

The financial sector continues to bleed out. But only part of the financial sector is on death watch, says Andrew Gordon in Investor’s Daily Edge. Small banks are doing better than ever. Some of them have price-to-book ratios of less than one. That means their going for free!

Bailout package is voted down! Biggest one day point drop for the DOW! Dollar rallies hard… Carry trades unwind… Again! And Now… Today’s Pfennig!