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The New York Times this morning asks, "Can American drivers live without that new-car smell?" while Bloomberg reports that the unemployment rate has reached more than 9 percent for the first time in more than 25 years.

General Motors (GM) will file for bankruptcy protection on Monday, the Detroit Free Press, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times all report this morning.

Uncle Sam will be calling the shots at General Motors (GM). Today's business press lead with the story of GM's significant restructuring plan that gives the U.S. government as much as 70 percent of the ailing automaker after the union walked away from the bargaining table with less than initially envisioned.

The U.S. Federal Reserve will probably keep benchmark interest rates near zero for a while, Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn said on Saturday, according to CNNmoney.com. "The economy is only now beginning to show signs that it might be stabilizing, and the upturn, when it begins, is likely to be gradual amid the balance sheet repair of financial intermediaries and households," he told a conference at Princeton University.

Will General Motors (GM) be forced into bankruptcy next week, or won't it? That's the million-dollar question the business press cannot seem to agree on this morning.

Bank of America (BAC) has capitalized on investors' growing appetite for financial stocks, raising $13.5 billion through the sale of common stock, half of that haul raised on Tuesday, the business press report this morning. According to the Wall Street Journal, BofA is looking "to create a $33.9 billion buffer to meet the U.S.

Silicon Valley is preparing for battle. The region's dominant tech and software firms "are bracing for a tough new phase of antitrust scrutiny" from the United States and abroad, the Wall Street Journal reports this morning.

Topping today's business press is the first round of dealership cuts coming from beleagured car maker General Motors (GM), news that comes on the heels of sweeping closures announced for Chrysler dealerships. The company sent letters to 1,100 dealers yesterday telling them they would no longer have a relationship with the flagging manufacturer beyond October 2010. The Wall Street Journal leads with a probe into potential insider violations by two SEC enforcement lawyers.

The New York Times off-leads, the Wall Street Journal leads its "Money & Investing" section, and Bloomberg reports that the $684 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market is next up to get a regulation makeover.

The Wall Street Journal off-leads and Bloomberg reports that Ford Motor Co. (F), the most robust of the Big Three, plans to issue 300 million shares of common stock in a public offering that will further distance itself from its crosstown rivals and will take advantage of an 11-week stock rally.

For better or worse, plenty of people are looking at the bank stress-test results released late last week as a benchmark for the state of the financial sector and the economy as a whole. The New York Times cautions that any overly positive spin on the results should be taken with a grain of salt. The consensus that the Fed would like to promote, according to the article, is that the banking mess of the past two years is finally becoming manageable. Its message: "All is under control.

Ten of America's biggest banks have been ordered by the Obama administration to raise a combined $74.6 billion in order to protect themselves from a worst-case scenario of projected multibillion-dollar losses through the end of next year, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times report.