Would you buy a used car from these men?

I watched a little of the C-SPAN coverage of the Paulson/Bearnke show last night. This was the Senate hearing where the Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve Chairman were pitching their plan to use $700 billion to buy up mortgage bonds and rescue the financial markets. As I understand it, their contention is that unless the government buys up all of these assets, the banks will not trade with each other, leading to other businesses and consumers being unable to get credit to run or expand their operations.

The august personages that sit on the Senate Banking Committee were, not surprisingly, reluctant to hand over an amount greater than the entire defense budget to two bald guys sitting at a folding table saying “yup, we really do need that much money.”

Based on the short section of the hearing that I watched, I felt like this was the gist of things:
Q: What assets will are you buying?
A: We don’t know yet. No point in thinking about that until you know you’ve got the money in hand.

Q; How will you price the assets you are buying?
A: We think we’ll use a reverse auction, but we’re not sure yet. The method of making purchases will vary based on the type of asset we are buying. Can we have the money now?

Q: How will you know if the prices you pay are fair prices?
A: Well, at this point we don’t know. We plan to hire some really smart guys to figure that out, just as soon as you give us statutory authority to spend enough money to buy Switzerland.

Q: What will you do if the taxpayers buy all of the crummy assets from Wall Street, and those guys turn around and award themselves multi-million dollar bonuses as a result?
A: We agree that would make the taxpayers feel cheated. But what is important here is that if you don’t hand over the money, the Wall Street boys will throw a tantrum and push us into a recession.

Q: Secretary Paulson, what kind of government oversight is included in your plan?
A: I never needed government oversight when I was running Goldman Sachs and awarding myself multi-million dollar bonuses, but there is this tweedy looking nerdy guy next to me. Would he count? On second thought, I welcome additional government oversight, just as long as they don’t get in the way while I’m writing checks.

Can you spell “half baked?” I wouldn’t give these guys any (more) money either.