Washington may soon commit hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out banks, mortgage companies, insurance companies and other businesses that never should have sought to profit from people who bought homes they couldn’t afford.

But no one is going to bail out Gaile Hensley. She'll just have to wait and hope that the big bailout bolsters the economy enough that some work trickles down to her.

The Idaho Housing and Finance Association says a new federal housing law will allow it to finance mortgages for an additional 750 households through its First Loan program, which offers low fixed interest rates.

More than $100 million in bonding authority will be used for the homeownership provisions in Idaho, the association said. The law also will make it possible for eligible households facing financial hardship with adjustable-rate mortgages made after Dec. 31, 2001 and before Jan. 1, 2008, to refinance into fixed-rate mortgages.

In case you missed it: Tuesday's USA Today took a look at the Boise housing market. The paper's weekly "Close to Home" feature quotes local real estate agent Dan Hernandez saying the local housing correction has been "relatively mild," with high-end homes languishing but homes from $100,000 to $275,000 moving briskly.

Idaho’s wood-products industry employs about 15,000 people, down from nearly 23,000 in 1979. But anyone who thinks the industry is yesterday’s news should see what’s happening in Grangeville.

More than 20 legislators, legislative candidates, state employees and others did that Friday as part of a two-day tour to learn about Idaho’s forests and forestry businesses. The tour was led by the Idaho Forest Products Commission, a state agency funded by taxes on the industry.

Marta Paulson was on a ski lift in Sun Valley last winter when the call came from Home and Garden Television: We loved your application. Would you send us a demonstration tape?

So when she returned home to Boise, Paulson invited a few of her neighbors over and pretended she was their real estate agent.

If a tree falls in the forest, does it matter if the tree isn’t on the Internet?

The struggling local economy hasn’t stopped another restaurant chain from coming to the Treasure Valley. Famous Dave’s (898-0325) has opened at 3510 N. Eagle Road in Meridian. The Minneapolis chain owns 48 stores and has 123 franchise stores in 34 states. It offers barbequed and grilled meats, salads and sandwiches. A full-page ad that ran in Sunday’s sports section shows a menu featuring items like a $19.99 strip steak, a $21.99 12-bone platter of ribs and a $5.49 bread pudding.

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Other local business highlights:

Micron’s stock price remained in the dumps this week after the Wall Street Journal reported that Micron is in talks to buy all or part of Infineon Technologies’ Qimonda unit — the world’s fifth-largest maker of dynamic random-access memory, Micron’s principal product. Micron is No. 4.

Infineon has a 77.5 percent stake in Qimonda. Both are based in Munich, Germany.

The end of summer isn’t when most of us think about income taxes, but accounting firms are quietly making plans for the 2009 tax season — and that includes finding workers to help with the crush.

Mark Solon, of Highway 12 Ventures, says he took part in "too many small regional venture events from 2000-2006 without the needed critical mass for success." So he proposed, and is organizing, the first fall gathering of the Intermountain Venture Capital Association in Sun Valley. You read about that in Solon's July 17 "Starting Up" column in the Statesman.