The Treasury Department who, along with the Fed, are the two main institutions whose job it is to monitor the U.S. financial systems. They had no idea of the gravity of the situation until last Thursday? Now they, and our Great Decider, demand that Congress immediately grant them (the exact same people who have been asleep at the switch) sweeping powers to buy (at this point) up to $700 billion of illiquid assets of both domestic and foriegn banks. If not, the world as we know it will end (maybe not a bad thing) They demand that the Congressional action be "quick and clean." In other words, "Just trust us and pass a groudbreaking piece of legislation of incredible magnitude, NOW!. This whole thing of Congress being a drliberative body is quaint like The Geneva Convention."

This looks to me to be the most brazen run yet on our national treasury by BushCo and his band of criminals. If they pull this off, they will probably be able to realize their dream of "drowning the federal government in a bathtub".

SONS OF BITCHES!!!

Are you getting that feeling of being rushed with this bailout like we were rushed into Iraq? You're correct. Why now when signs of bank-mortgage failures were evident over a year ago?

This has smells of Bush all over it. I guess the fears of wars had worn off and now it's time to worry in fear about main street via wall street.

It's often hard to distinguish incompetence from malfeasance, but there was certainly an abundance of both involved here. Forces of market fundamentalism tracing back to Reagan and beyond, enabled by Bush's fecklessness, created a crisis which it is now too late to fix by any means other than exhorbitant bailouts. It isn't we the taxpayers who will pay for it; we don't have enough money. Loans from China and elsewhere will provide the capital and maybe with any luck our great grandchildren will pay off the balance.