Associated Press: If Barack's Plan Doesn't Work, the Ensuing Run on the Banks Will Make "It's a Wonderful Life" Look Like a Walk in the Park

These days, you can roll up to an ATM at the grocery, the pharmacy, the

gas station, the hardware store, the office, even the ballpark. You can

check your Bank of America balance on your iPhone. You can text Chase,

and Chase will text you back. That's banking today: It has grown from an

almost quaint relationship between teller and customer into a massive,

dizzyingly interconnected network that touches almost every adult in this

country. And right now, the federal government — working without a road

map, and without a net — is putting together a plan to keep U.S. banks

from collapsing. Not just to get the banks lending again. To keep them

alive. The government is expected to announce Monday a plan analysts

expect will include lifting soured mortgage assets off selected banks' books,

possibly along with guarantees against other losses and maybe more direct

injections of cash. Getting it wrong could trigger a replay of what happened

after Lehman Brothers collapsed last fall — the stock market in free fall,

seizure of the credit markets, ripples of layoffs. Perhaps even a run on the

banks — so many customers rushing to pull out their cash that it would

make the bank run in "It's a Wonderful Life" look like, well, a feel-good

holiday movie. "The banks are at a terrible junction," says Robert Reich, a

labor secretary under President Bill Clinton. "The bottom is falling out . . ."