WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration asked Congress on Saturday for the power to buy $700 billion in toxic assets clogging the financial system and threatening the economy as negotiations began on the largest bailout since the Great Depression.

The rescue plan would give Washington broad authority to purchase bad mortgage-related assets from U.S. financial institutions for the next two years. It does not specify which institutions qualify or what, if anything, the government would get in return for the unprecedented infusion.

Democrats are pressing to require that the plan help more strapped borrowers stay in their homes and to condition the bailout on new limits on executive compensation.

Congressional aides and administration officials are working through the weekend to fill in the details of the proposal. The White House hoped for a deal with Congress by the time markets opened Monday; top lawmakers say they would push to enact the plan as early as the coming week.

"We're going to work with Congress to get a bill done quickly," President Bush said at the White House. Without discussing specifics, he said, "This is a big package because it was a big problem."

The proposal is a mere three pages long, but it gives sweeping powers to the government to dispense gigantic sums of taxpayer dollars in a program that would be sheltered from court review.

"It's a rather brief bill with a lot of money," said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., the Banking Committee

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- Warren Buffett's youthful confidence about his business acumen hid a self-doubt about nearly everything else, yet the son of a Nebraska congressman grew into one of the world's greatest investors.

The tale of how the brilliant but needy Buffett built a fortune by investing in undervalued companies is recounted in the first authorized biography of the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. The Associated Press obtained an audio version of the book Friday, ahead of its Sept. 29 release.

The book's author, former insurance analyst Alice Schroeder, writes that when Buffett was a newlywed in his early 20s, he relied on his wife Susan to help cut his hair, stock the pantry and help him deal with other people.

"In every area of life except business, Susie was discovering her husband was riddled with self-doubt," Schroeder wrote. "He had never felt love, and she saw, he did not feel lovable."

The new book, "The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life," goes on to explain how Susan Buffett left Warren Buffett in 1977 and moved to San Francisco. But the couple never divorced before her death in 2004, even though he lived with another woman most of those years.

Buffett married his longtime companion, Astrid Menks, in a private ceremony on his 76th birthday in 2006.

Some of the information in Schroeder's book is new, but much of it will seem familiar to Buffett's legions of