♦ Following a weekend of non-stop negotiations, a deal is now in place to stabilize Citigroup: The bank will get a $20 billion cash injection from the Treasury Department and the government will guarantee $306 billion worth of toxic assets. [Bloomberg, NYT, WSJ]
♦ The next group in line for a bailout? Home builders, who are now lobbying Congress for a $250 billion stimulus package. [WSJ]
♦ The U.S. economy may need $300 billion and $600 billion more to survive the crisis, says George Soros. [DB]

♦ American Express may be looking for as much as $3.5 billion in government assistance as the company struggles with reduced consumer spending and rising defaults. [WSJ]
♦ Hope is fading fast at GM. Shares fell to $2.92 on Tuesday, the lowest level in 65 years, and the company does not expect "to continue as a going concern" without a rescue plan in place by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Democrats are pushing ahead with a plan to save the automaker. [NYT, Bloomberg]
♦ Who doesn't want a piece of the bailout? The line outside the Treasury Department in Washington is a long one. [NYT]

Cartoonish plutocrat Stephen Schwarzman would rather not be known as a cartoonish plutocrat! You may recall how the multibillionaire CEO of Blackstone Group threw himself a $3 million star-studded birthday party (with Rod Stewart!) last year and thereby became the living symbol of the wretched excesses of Wall Street money-jugglers in this modern boom era. Well now that everybody is broke he regrets doing that stuff, okay:

Most private equity titans are sitting in their stately offices high above the city nervously eyeing the declining stock prices on their Bloomberg flat-panels on their desks. Not Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire co-founder of the Blackstone Group. Steve simply decided to skip the mess altogether and jet off to his house in St. Tropez. He isn't sitting in his beachside mansion fretting about the millions he's losing on an hourly basis either. Over the weekend he and his wife Christine were spotted at Club 55, where the couple were apparently "trying to ignore the dire economic news." Here's hoping generous helpings of tuna carpaccio and Beluga caviar helped ease the pain.

• Steve Feinberg's investments in Chrysler and GMAC haven't gone as expected and now his Cerberus Capital is on the defensive. [NYT]

• The price of oil has dropped after Hurricane Gustav did less damage than initially feared. [CNNMoney]

• Earnings are down at Eddie Lampert's Sears. [Bloomberg]

• Obama now has a running mate. But now Joe Biden's son and brother are in the news over a hedge fund that went sour. [WaPo, Dealbook]

• Lehman Brothers chief Dick Fuld is in discussions with several private-equity and foreign investors about raising even more capital for the struggling bank. [NYP]

• Time Warner is getting ready to sell off its AOL dial-up business and may announce a deal this week. [WSJ]

• Dick Fuld's Lehman Bros is considering selling Neuberger Berman for as much as $8 billion. [Reuters]

• The Weather Channel was sold by Landmark Communications to NBC Universal, Bain Capital, and Blackstone for just under $3.5 billion. [NYT]