According to this article, Congress may be heading towards authorizing $700B but disbursing only $150B to see how the program is going.  Also, the proposals of curtailing extreme compensation of executives in participating entities and more oversight of Treasury are on the table.  Allowing bankruptcy judges to modify first mortgages is off the table. 

If we maintained a balanced economy that included a much higher percentage of production of goods, this would not be a debacle.  But consumer spending is 70% of our economy instead of a better 50%, with production of goods being a bigger proportion.  And financial services are too high a proportion of the economy.

I don't see a proposal to take equity stakes in the companies, instead of buying trash assets which Uncle Sam cannot resell later at a profit.  Recall that Sweden's government took equity stakes in banks in 1992 and resold at a profit once they stabilized things.

Nobody knows what these assets are worth.

A big concern in Washington — and among many ordinary Americans — is that the difficulty in valuing these assets could result in the government’s buying them for more than they will ever be worth, a step that would benefit financial institutions at taxpayers’ expense.  ...

While prices of most stocks are no mystery — they flicker across PCs and televisions all day — the troubled investments are not traded on any exchange. The market for them is opaque: traders do business over the telephone, and days can go by without a single trade.

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