Really, it’s that bad. Yves Smith calls it a “financial coup d’etat.” I smell a finan­cial ver­sion of the Patriot Act, whereby no Con­gress­man can, for polit­i­cal rea­sons, stand up to stop a very bad bill that they have not under­stood or likely even read.

The short ver­sion of the problems:

1/ Unlim­ited power for the Trea­sury Depart­ment (and no judi­cial review or Con­gres­sional over­sight, except for very scant report­ing requirements).

2/ No assur­ance that the gov­ern­ment (i.e. we) will not pay too much money for the distressed/toxic assets that lie at the heart of this steam­ing mess.

3/ No reg­u­la­tory overhaul.

4/ A decent like­li­hood that the government’s AAA credit rating will suffer, which means a tum­bling dollar. (Update: 9/22: This one, inci­den­tally, is basi­cally inevitable for any pro­posal big enough to have a chance at avert­ing crisis, so it’s prob­a­bly not fair to lump it in with the others. Still, it’s some­thing to think about.)

Want to learn more? Good, read this: Why You Should Hate the Trea­sury Bailout Proposal.