The critical part of the bailout is the price the government pays for the trash assets it buys from banks. In short, if the government pays too much, the taxpayers will get hosed.

So it is interesting to note the difference between the price the government is proposing to pay and the price one of the world's smartest investors--Warren Buffett--would be willing to pay. To wit:

Bernanke and Paulson want to pay a phantom "hold-to-maturity" price that is above the prices at which the banks are currently valuing their trash assets. The logic is that the banks' carrying value is somehow artificially depressed by a lack of liquidity. (This logic is weak: If anything, the banks are trying to conceal how badly off they are by overstating the value of the assets).

Warren Buffett, meanwhile, thinks the appropriate price would be the "market value," which he believes is below the price at which the banks are currently carrying their trash:

[If] they do [the bailout] right, I think they'll make a lot of money.... They shouldn't buy these debt instruments at what the institutions paid. They shouldn't buy them at what they're carrying, what the carrying value is, necessarily. They should buy them at the kind of prices that are available in the market. People who are buying these instruments in the market are expecting to make 15 to 20 percent on those instruments. If the government makes anything over its cost of borrowing, this deal will come out with a profit. And I would bet it will come out with a profit, actually...

You can be pretty fanciful in marking positions in Wall Street, particularly when things aren't trading. The one thing you want to make sure, when the Treasury is buying things, is the marks they have don't make any difference. Like I said, it wouldn't be a bad idea, if you're buying ten billion of a security and you're the Treasury, to have them sell five-hundred million, or something like that into the market, so you find out what the real market price is and then buy the other 9-1/2 billion at that price. I really think, I really think the Treasury will make -- I think they'll pay back the 700 billion and make a considerable amount of money, if they approach it in that manner.

Read that again. Warren Buffett is not talking about paying any theoretical "hold-to-maturity" price. He's not even talking about the "don't-give-your-shareholders-all-the-bad-news-yet" carrying price (the "fanciful" ones he describes above). He's talking about the market price. And, unlike Bernanke, he's not suggesting that market price is somehow artificially depressed by a lack of liquidity. On the contrary, he's saying the market price is the market price because that's the price intelligent investors need to pay to offset their risk. The goverment should not pay one cent more than the market price.

Why aren't Bernanke and Paulson suggesting that the government pay a "market price." Because they know the banks will continue to insist that this price is too low and won't play ball. Fine. The answer is NOT to pay them to help the country--especially since they are a primary reason the company has gotten into this mess.

The answer is either to let them crash and burn and come begging for a bailout--at which point you nuke their shareholders completely AND/OR put a time-limit on the bailout offer, so they have to weigh their own self-interest vs. possible self-destruction. And in any case, you take equity, too, so you don't get screwed while their shareholders zoom.

Remember: You don't need to save all the banks to save the country. You only need to save some.

See Also:

Warren Buffett Bails Out GE

Bottom Line on the Hanke-Panke Bailout Plan

Buffett on the Bailout: The CNBC Interview