The U.S stock market saw upward movement after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner revealed new details of the Department’s mortgage bailout plan.

The Dow Jones Industrial shot up 3.5 percent by mid-morning following the announcement, an incredible improvement over early February when Geithner initially introduced the plan with vague details and few specifics; that day the Dow Jones dropped 4.6 percent.

The revised plan basically gives private investors more incentive to buy up “toxic” mortgage-backed securities from their holders.  (The Treasury plan also tried to put a more positive spin on these bad mortgage loans by calling them not “toxic loans” as the entire financial sector has for the past year, but as “legacy assets.”)

The Treasury will use up to $100 billion of tax-payer Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds to subsidize private investment in these “legacy assets,”  in hopes of helping buyers snatch up $500 billion worth such assets, taking them out of play for the mortgage market and speeding up the correction.

“This approach is superior to the alternatives of either hoping for banks to gradually work these assets off their books or of the government purchasing the assets directly,” the Treasury said in a briefing paper. “Simply hoping for banks to work legacy assets off over time risks prolonging a financial crisis, as in the case of the Japanese experience. But if the government acts alone in directly purchasing legacy assets, taxpayers will take on all the risk of such purchases—along with the additional risk that taxpayers will overpay if government employees are setting the price for those assets.”

One of the new features of the plan that seems to have struck a good chord with the financial markets is that the price at which toxic assets will be bought up will be set through open auctions, creating a market-led price rather than an arbitrary government-set price.

Private investors will be able to contribute as little as 6 percent of their own capital for those purchases, with the government subsidizing the remainder of the cost. Yet to make this more palatable to the average taxpayer, Geithner said Monday that the investors will be responsible for the risk first and foremost.

“Their entire capital will be at risk, that’s the important thing,” he said.  He also claimed that if things go well, the government and taxpayers will profit. “If there’s a return over time, which we expect there will be, taxpayers will share in that return.”

There are no guarantees that investors will take part in the new plan, but based on the markets’ reaction to the new details there are likely to be plenty of participants.

Your credit score reflects how much debt you currently have and your performance in repaying other debts. Knowing your credit score is important for practical purposes, and here is a list of several reasons why…

1. It provides a better idea of what sort of mortgages and other credit offers you should be eligible for. People with high credit scores typically receive better interest rates. Without knowing the score, it is easier for a high-interest lender to deceive you into believing that loans that are more desirable are beyond your reach.
2. When you aren’t sure if your record has improved enough to make applying for loans worthwhile, knowing the credit score will clarify this. For example, if you made several late payments a few years ago, the score will reveal how much your eligibility has recovered since then.
3. If you are young and/or haven’t used credit much (or for very long), knowing this score is important for determining if you have conducted sufficient financial activity yet to qualify for a mortgage or other major loan. Banks are typically quite willing to offer credit cards to people with no credit history, but reluctant to allow other borrowing.
4. Knowing the score will let you discern if it is currently important to take steps aimed at improving your credit record. Such measures may include looking for and correcting important errors on the record, consolidating multiple debts, or putting a greater emphasis upon paying off your existing debt.
5. Keeping a high score isn’t as simple as some people would suggest. Factors like the number of separate debts and the amount of credit record inquiries (from lenders you have applied to) can influence these scores. It is important not to assume that the score is good, average, or poor without verifying this assertion by actually knowing what it is.

Knowing how favorably the reporting agencies have evaluated your debt management is also interesting, along with discovering how effective your financial strategy has been in this regard. Services are available that continually monitor the score, making it easier to see the impact of paying off debts, submitting late payments, or other financial changes.

The only reasons why you would forgo knowing your credit score would be because of the fee to obtain this information, or if it’s not important because you don’t plan to apply for any type of loan.