WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)–The federal rescue of the U.S. financial system is likely to cost far less than initially anticipated, partly because the government’s foreclosure-prevention programs have “largely failed to get off the ground,” a new report says.

The rescue, launched by the Bush administration at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, “will cost less than expected, in part because it will accomplish far less than envisioned for American homeowners,” a congressional panel said in its final report on the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The U.S. government’s Wall Street bailout, initially forecast to be as large as $700 billion, …

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Dune Real Estate Partners agreed to buy the mortgage for New York’s Mark hotel for about $190 million as the Manhattan lodging market continues to recover, a person with knowledge of the transaction said.

Anglo Irish Bank is selling the loan on the Upper East Side luxury hotel, where rooms start at about $450 a night, said the person, who asked not to be identified because negotiations are private.

Dune, based in New York and led by Daniel Neidich, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) real estate executive, plans to work with Alexico Group, the hotel’s developer, the person said. The deal’s closing date is unknown, the person said. The Wall Street Journal reported the transaction earlier today.

New York City hotel sales probably will double to as much as $2.4 billion this year as Manhattan is the most active U.S. market for lodging transactions, Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels said last month. Increasing financing availability and plans by investors to sell assets before loans expire next year are likely to boost sales in the city to at least $1.9 billion in 2011, according to the London-based investment-services company.

Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels is a unit of Chicago-based Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., the largest publicly traded commercial property broker after Los Angeles-based CB Richard Ellis Inc.

Dune Real Estate Partners oversees funds that have more than $1.5 billion under management and target distressed, underperforming and undervalued assets, according to a March 4 company statement.

The Mark, located on Madison Avenue at 77th Street, features a restaurant run by chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nadja Brandt in Los Angeles at nbrandt@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kara Wetzel at kwetzel@bloomberg.net

This guest post is by Brandon Connell of brandonconnell.com.

Leverage is something I have used my entire life. It was what I used when I bought a 5,000 square foot mansion with zero down, bad credit, and had the seller finance the deal 100%. Fortunately, I was easily able to adopt the idea of leverage for my online businesses as well.

The funny thing about blogging is that many people give up too easily. They abandon their blogs because they don’t see the progress with it that they envisioned. That progress may have been in the form of traffic, commentary, or something else. By using leverage, you can have all of these things, and more, instantly!

One form of leverage that I have been using more of these days, is Fiverr.com. If you aren’t aware, Fiverr is where you can go to hire people to do something for $5. I like to use it to get some extra stumbles on StumbleUpon, or some permanent backlinks. You can also use it to have text or video reviews created for your new product. The possibilities are truly endless, and you need only explore the site for ten minutes before you come up with some ideas.

Fiverr will definitely help you launch your new blog and get that needed traffic, but it’ll also save you time that you can spend writing valuable content for your blog. And you thought outsourcing was too costly for your small operation…

The use of leverage vs. the traditional DIY method

The do-it-yourself method is what I started out with. I worked my behind off building up traffic to my blog. I worked extra hard pushing out seven articles every single day. I went blog hopping 100 times every day. It was a rough experience, and I recommend against it to any newbie or established but struggling bloggers out there.

I am not saying that DIY learning was a bad thing. I think that it added character and first-hand knowledge to my blogging arsenal. I do, however, believe that if you can combine the learning process with the use of knowledge learned from others right away, then you can go much further in a shorter time period.

By utilizing others to do the tedious tasks that take hours of your time, you can really focus on quality, and learn from their work at the same time. You can learn what works and what doesn’t by paying someone else $5 to actually do the work for you.

Leverage comes in many forms

I want to dive deeper into some of the steps you can take to make leverage work to your advantage, so you can build your blog faster.

To keep this simple, I’m going to focus on the Fiverr.com website, so you know where to go and get started right away.

• Articles – I would say it is a must to write your own articles for your blog, except in the case where you’re using guest posts. However, you don’t need to write your own EzineArticles, if you use that service. Instead, why not hire someone to write five or ten unique articles for EzineArticles? It will only cost you $5. Of course you’ll have to check the posts’ quality—they’re representing your blog, after all. But this could be a good way to reduce your workload if you find the right service provider on Fiverr.
• Stumbles – I hired a guy the other day to stumble 33 of my blog posts and pages on three separate accounts, and it brought me some easy traffic. You can find lots of people to do something similar on the cheap.
• Twitter followers – Why go through the tedious task of following and unfollowing non-followers every couple of days, when you can have someone get the followers for you? It’s even better if you hire someone to get you non-reciprocal followers—and, depending on your strategy, can be more personal and targeted than using an automated service.
• Facebook likes – Do you have a Facebook page with only 50 likes or so? Hire someone to get you 200 at a time for $5. Remember, this is a numbers game. The more people who like your page, the more people will see it on their walls and follow suit.
• Promotional materials – Outsource the collection of video and text reviews about your product or service. Then you can focus more on the launch of the product or service, and generating maximum sales.
• Traffic – You can hire someone to tweet your message daily for a week to their thousands of followers on multiple accounts. That will get some traffic to your product or blog article quickly. It will also result in new followers. No, the traffic levels may not last over time, but as a means to get a launch-period boost, this can be a tactic worth considering.
• Offline marketing – There are people who will put your message on a billboard sign and stand in front of Grand Central Station for $5! Let’s not neglect the power of offline marketing—which can also be procured on the site.
• Design – Looking for graphic design? Guess what. Someone will do it on the cheap if it’s a small project.

Beyond Fiverr

Are we seeing a pattern here? The power of leverage is an amazing thing, and you can master it in a short period of time.

Don’t let me make you think that Fiverr is the only place to use leverage, though—it’s just one example of outsourcing, which is just one example of leverage. There are many things you can do to access the benefits of leverage, such as sending out a newsletter to a targeted double opt-in list, and having a mailing list company deliver it, too.

If you are already using leverage, please share your experiences with us below.

Brandon Connell is a full-time blogger and internet marketing expert who teaches you how to make money blogging. You can also hire him for consulting and coaching services.