Cold eyes and a hard face. Click to enlarge. That image is from here (see here). Beyond the face of a power broker who never had to face any electorate, for further eloquent images see here, and here.
______UPDATE________
For the thousand words, Firedoglake has a skeptic's view, here.
It seems an ill-explored route to reassuring those holding the mortgage backed debt instruments is for the Government to buy up each failed mortgage, one at a time, from the securitized pool, and to then mop each up as individually proper. If a family can avoid a foreclosure via restructuring, the Government would own the mortgage and could restructure it to help "little guys" whereas if the situation is beyond hope the Government can foreclose, rent, and if/when there's a market rebound and the housing over-supply lessens, then sell the property at fair-market-value.
It would be win-win, but the problem is some pension funds and other citizen-owned retirement portfolios probably own investment bank debt, which presently appears highly depreciated from face value, if not worthless. Those prudent people who did not overextend the credit card and instead saved should not be penalized by any bailout that might help families that got in over their heads on a home purchase.
It is not so simple a thing that calling it a "heist" is any real answer. I disagree with Firedoglake's analysis that way. Let's see what Congress will allow, and Bush will sign. While there probably are many in Congress who took Wall Street money for their campaigns, let's hope it was not a purchase but a rental, with books even now.
I expect what's done will please few, but clearly the Paulson package is set out to allow the Dems to put something into the mix too.
It just seems that instead of popping $700 billion commitments now that a gradual buying of underlying mortgages from the pooled securitized holdings would be a more gradual and less disruptive way to do things, with those holding brokerage or investment house debt a separate situation to study and see how best to separately restructure that situation to be least disruptive to markets AND taxpayers.
________FURTHER UPDATE________
And in mortgage buyouts from securitized pools, each can be at a negotiated price, a "market value" surrogate, and not all need to be at 100 cents on the dollar. There should be a potential to discount, and recapture of rapacious origination and set up charges, prosecutions of law violators, etc., should not be curtailed. And demand that all the golden parachutes also are restructured on a a case-by-case basis, with some of the money going into unemployment insurance pools for the lower level Wall Street minions who get downsized out of jobs without a safety net.