To bail or not to bail, the $700 billion question

Watched the TV to see if Wall St was going to get $700 billion in my taxes and everyone else's taxes. A vast waste land. Fox talked about McCain canceling/postponing Friday's debate and what Obama thought about that. Endless campaign chitchat of little interest. A complete lack of information on the bailout. Like how many votes does it have? What are the terms? What amendments are the democrats pressing for. Does any Congress critter support the administration proposal? What happens if we do nothing? What do business leaders, labor leaders and academics think? Fox is beyond clueless.
The president came on at 9PM. He should have said "Cough up $700 billion or the Great Depression comes back". Trouble is, people would take him seriously and start selling every stock they own. So he couldn't say that. In fact, TV viewers ought to remember that responsible officials, in being responsible, will minimize the trouble lest they make it worse. Sen Chuckie Schumer pushed IndyMac bank into bankruptcy a couple of months ago with just a memo badmouthing their financial position. Of course Chuckie isn't a responsible official.
It's clear to me that the real issue is how much cash to put into the banks. All the talk about the evils of bad mortgage backed securities clogging the system is just talk. The banks are out of money. Paulsen wants to pour tax dollars into the banks to keep them afloat. To make things look a little better, he calls it "buying illiquid assets", but illiquid is a nice way of saying worthless. So it gets down to giving the banks a big Christmas present.
The original proposal was Paulsen becomes Santa Claus, with the power to decide who gets how much. Nice deal for the Treasury Secretary. On the other hand, he will do a better job than the pork loving Congress. Far as I can see, Congressional calls for "oversight" really mean Congress wants to hand out the money to their special friends, rather than letting Paulsen do it.
The bailout would be more palatable to us taxpayers if the senior management of the bailed out firms got hurt. Like no bonuses, ever, put the company jet on E-bay, cancel all severance (golden parachute) payments, stock options, and other goodies. Trim retirement benefits back to Social Security levels. Top management salaries reduced to $1 a year. No salary in the entire company to exceed $100K. Companies claim they pay top salaries to attract top talent. Any company dumb enough to buy sub prime mortgage securities doesn't have top talent. Might as well save a few big ones by skinning them down to the bone. Besides, I enjoy a little payback as much as any other man.