Fec quotes someone who, like me, doesn’t trust the government’s bailout.  I think he does a better job explaining why:

Hat tip to my excellent commenter, RBM.  From the comments at Sic Semper Tyrannis:

The DK writer who claims to know financial markets says there are
estimates of $400 billion in outstanding private offers for these
securities, but the institutions just don’t feel inclined to sell at a
loss right now, thank you very much. If that is true, the Paulson
scheme is just a scam, a pure and simple scam.

Again, we see the perverse incentives created by this completely
unregulated securities market regime. The paper is held by large
corporations that do not want to take a loss. So they use their crony
capitalist buddies in Washington to scare the public into a premature
bail out, before any bankruptcy, before anyone has to deal with any
losses. Nice work if you can get it.

And from what I read, the miserable incompetent and crook, Paulson
does not even feel inclined to discuss reforms right now (dire
sitation, don’t you know). Therefore, as best I can tell, the very
flawed and perversely functioning (IMH economist’s opinion, very
inefficient!) unregulated mortgage securities financiing system will
continue. Forget about whether this will happen again five years down
the road, how do we know this flawed system will not malfunction again
as the real asset values (housing prices) continue to fall towards a
realistic long run equilibrium. It is crazy, crooked and dangerous.
Unless rich crony welfare is the only objective.

I’m telling you, this thing stinks to high heaven.