The Obama administration will announce details of a plan today to expand the $700 billion rescue of the financial system that will rely on enticing private investors to buy the troubled assets clogging banks’ balance sheets.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who will unveil the Public Private Investment Program today, has crafted an approach using up to $100 billion of bailout money to spur investment funds to purchase — and banks to unload — the illiquid securities and loans that have caused credit to dry up. The Treasury, Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will all play a role alongside private investors in aiming to buy between $500 billion and $1 trillion of troubled assets.

“By providing a market for these assets that does not now exist, this program will help improve asset values, increase lending capacity by banks, and reduce uncertainty about the scale of losses on bank balance sheets,” Geithner said in an op-ed piece published in today’s Wall Street Journal. “The ability to sell assets to this fund will make it easier for banks to raise private capital.”

The announcement is a major test for Geithner, whose first speech on the financial rescue Feb. 10 offered so few details that it triggered a sell-off in financial stocks. Adding to the pressure on the administration is an unprecedented wave of populist anger over the rescue thus far, following the revelation that employees of American International Group Inc. got $165 million in bonuses after the insurer received taxpayer funds.

Source: Bloomberg.com

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