Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Well, TALF stands for Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. No wonder people call it the TALF. And let me illustrate how it works with an example. Let's say that you want to buy a car. You go to an auto dealer, and, indeed, you do buy a car. And you take out a loan from that auto dealer. The auto dealer will then take your loan as well as other loans that he's made and bundle them together and sell them to investors. Now the investors who buy those loans will borrow money from the Federal Reserve at very low interest rates to fund that purchase. Now if you do not make your car payment, the Federal Reserve will actually be on the hook for those losses, at least the initial losses. So supporters say that this is going to reduce the risk to auto dealers and to investors of making loans available to consumers. And so they say lending will go up. Critics say no, consumers will still be reluctant to buy, for example, cars as long as their jobs are at risk. So the question really here is what is going to be the first to improve? Will lending go up and improve the economy and actually give a boost to jobs so more people will want to borrow and spend? Or will it simply be that consumers are going to sit on the sidelines regardless of how easy it is to borrow money? We'll obviously have to wait and see whether the TALF does work."