This comes from an e-mail titled, “It’s worse than I thought,” from a reader with a good deal of inside-the-Beltway experience:

It’s Christmas…This has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ORIGINAL CONCEPT. In fact very little has really been changed with respect to the original Paulson plan…The new PIG has everything to do with Senate Finance. There are 300 pages of tax breaks. McCain and Obama are out on the campaign trail…What are they saying??? Washington back the bill! Yet this thing is nothing but “earmarks,” which McCain said he would veto…and “business as ususal” which is the entire basis of Obama’s Change campaign. And I’ve been watching CNBC all day…the finance talking heads can’t even begin to understand what’s happened here. This is a stunning power grab by a small group of US Senators…one assumes with the backing of Bush. Pelosi had her chance…Paulson got down on one knee. When she couldn’t deliver, it became a Senate issue and they have overwhelmed everyone… Incredible…hey added hundreds of billions to this with all the crap…..

And from another reader from his (no doubt in vain) communiques to elected officials:

Overall during the 1990s, Japan tried 10 fiscal stimulus packages totaling more than 100 trillion yen, and each failed to cure the recession. What the spending programs have done, however, is put Japan’s government in poor fiscal shape. The “on-budget” government spending has caused public debt to exceed 100 percent of GDP (highest in the G7), and even more debt is apparent when the “off-budget” sector is included. Japan tried changing the rules, they took assets, they tried to prevent them from going down. Look at the Japan Stock market ever since. Despite all that money the market continued to go down, as will ours. The scare tactic being used in washington would lead you to believe otherwise. Of course Jean Claude Trichet wants you to approve this. Deutche Bank, UBS, etc.. are all knee-deep in these credit derivatives…He wants us to bail out them, meanwhile he refused to cut interest rates this entire time which would have been favorable to the dollar. Now we are facing a real threat of hyperinflation if congress allows this plan to proceed. No amount of jiggering this bill is going to make it right. However, Doing Something is clearly taking precedence over Doing Something That Might Actually Work. McDonalds now has less of a chance of defaulting on his debt than the United States. That’s correct, we are now facing the very real possibility of having our own national debt downgraded. Lastly, PLEASE do yourself a favor and look at your own economic data. Personal Savings Rate, Household Debut and Foregin ownership of our debt: Just look at these 3 graphs then ask yourself a few questions about this bailout http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PSAVERT

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CMDEBT

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/FDHBFI

Like the monolines, the US will be seen as a less than stellar credit long before any debt downgrade were to occur. Japan’s yen debt rating was single A before recent upgrades.

And from another reader who worked in the financial markets and now has a ringside seat: