selling the bailout

If the bailout were done right it appears it would be sensible to do it. The trouble is:

• It's hard to summon confidence that the Bush administration could do anything right
• It's hard to do something this big correctly.
• The American people don't seem to want it
• It's been sold horribly to Congress and the country.
• If it did succeed it would wrongly encourage future interventions that might NOT be sensible to do.
  

The three major problems in selling the bailout are:

• the treasury-secretary-as-czar clause that Paulson is equivocating on now
  
• the absence of any clear plan (including the fact that the $700 bn figure was apparently pulled out of the air).
• the absence of any track record in the Bush administration or the Fed for understanding the scope of the problem

For those still wanting to be persuaded of the benefits of the bailout, try this 30 minute interview with Warren Buffet.