Hidden Inside The Bailout

is a better bailout. I only learned about this today while listening to the excellent team of reporters who've been explaining the financial thingy (crisis, meltdown, disaster, tsunami, all of the preceding?) on their blog, in podcasts and for Ira Glass's radio show on NPR called This American Life.
At the very end of the program, which helped me understand credit default swaps even though I didn't want to, one reporter noted that their is some "very subtle" language in the bill that no one apparently noticed when it passed the Senate. It then went right through the House and the president's desk intact, even though the banking types had heavily lobbied against it and no one had expected it to get through.
It allows the SecTreas at his discretion to do what the majority of economists have preferred, a "stock injection plan," meaning getting the taxpayers a piece of each bank in return for the financial help. Yeah, just like Warren Buffet is getting from Bear Sterns (or was it Goldman Sachs) and GE.
Nobody knows who put the language in.
Paulson may not do it. Or he may get pressured to do it. But it's certain that an Obama SecTreas will, and that's what we're going to have in a few short and financially scary months.
Here's a link to the Planet Money blog at NPR where you can read all about it.
This American Life puts their shows online a few days after broadcast. Here's their link.