The late former U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen (D-Illinois) was fond of saying "a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you are talking real money."

Well, today he would probably be saying trillion rather than billion as he looked incredulously at the steps being taken by the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve Bank and the U.S. Congress in their efforts to rescue various components of the U.S. economy from the credit crisis.

It appears more and more likely that the Congress will move to save the U.S. auto industry (at least temporarily) from their financial problems, no matter the extent to which the problems are the result of self-inflicted wounds.

In what seems to be a never ending litany of new measures to save the moribund housing industry, the Bush administration is now floating the idea of the Treasury funding the purchase of mortgage backed securities with direct U.S. borrowings.

The idea is for the Treasury to issue new government bonds that would permit lenders to originate loans at rates as low as 4.5%. The initial proposal limits the program to the funding of homebuyers purchases of newly built homes, acting as a spur to the home building industry.

These moves are coming as new economic reports heighten the gloom surrounding the U.S. economy in general and the auto and home building industries in particular.

Reports this past week on construction spending, productivity, initial jobless claims, factory orders, nonfarm payrolls and consumer credit painted a grim picture as virtually all reports were more negative than market expectations.

The reports were especially disconcerting as the forecasts had significant changes in advance of the announcements during the week.

Factory orders, for example, had initially been forecast to come in at negative 2.7%, later revised to an expected -4.5%, which was surpassed as the report came in at -5.1%.

Consumer credit had been expected at plus $2.7 billion, revised during the week to plus $1.5 billion. The actual report pegged consumer credit at a negative $3.5 billion.

Reports for the week of particular interest to the credit markets were:

Benchmark treasuries finished the week at yields higher than the levels reached earlier in the week, with the 10-year closing at 2.67% and the 30-year closing at 3.11%. Both levels are lower than the close at the end of the previous week.

The most significant event on the corporate bond side was the completion of an offering of 10 and 30 year debt by Caterpillar. The 10-year offering was purchased at a spread to treasuries of 525 basis points, and the 30-year was priced at a spread of 510 basis points.

Next week, reports include the following:

Significant new corporate offerings are expected to be from John Deere, BONY, Mellon and Comerica, all of whom have indicated that they will be opting in to the new government backed corporate bond program.

This article was written by Jamie Dlugosch, contributor to InvestorPlace.com. For more actionable insight like this, go to: www.InvestorPlace.com. James F. Dlugosch contributed to this article.