How did they get to this number of 700 billion USD?  Brian Wingfield and Josh Zumbrun, Forbes magazine reporters, write:

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number." [my emphasis]

Is there nothing that Republicans won't do to bamboozle and swindle people out of their homes and to keep Wall Street failed financiers in the black?  But it takes a willing accomplice to the crime.  Wingfield and Zumbrung continue:

A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says she is optimistic that the House will pass a bill this week. But that doesn't mean the Senate, which is by nature more sluggish than its larger counterpart on the other side of Capitol Hill, will be so quick to act.

Martin D. Weiss writes, from his financial newsletter Money and Markets:

We believe Congress may be on the verge of making what could become one of the greatest policy mistakes of modern times, passing bailout legislation that could aggravate, rather than alleviate, the nation's massive debt crisis.

Who is Martin D. Weiss?  Eric N. Berg, New York Tiems business writer, reports:

An anthropology graduate of New York University and Columbia University, Mr. Weiss began his career by working at the investment-newsletter publishing firm of his father, Irving Weiss. One of his first assignments was editing Money and Credit Reports, a newsletter that dealt with interest rates and the safety of financial institutions. Mr. Weiss says he trained for that job as a teen-ager, tagging along when the elder Mr. Weiss visited banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies. On His Own

In 1971, Mr. Weiss struck out on his own, founding Weiss Research to provide investment advice to wealthy individuals. In 1976, he expanded the business to include the publication of his own financial newsletters (his father's newsletters had ceased operating by then).

In 1980, after a two-year stint in Japan as a Fulbright Scholar studying decision making in Japanese financial institutions, Mr. Weiss returned to the United States to begin issuing formal safety ratings on banks and saving associations.

Nine years later, he began rating insurers. Unlike the other major agencies, which rely heavily on management assessments, Mr. Weiss focuses on the detailed financial results that insurers file with state insurance commissions. To generate a letter grade, he crunches all the numbers using a computer model developed by an actuary, Peter Chapman, and an insurance professor, Harold Skipper of Georgia State University.

Time to stop the Bush-Pelosi gravy train to the privateers of the financial sector.  As many others have said why should be we believe in the "solution" from the same people who brought such fiscal irresponsiblity upon themselves (like Sec. Treasury Paulson who was Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs)?