A few trillion here, a few trillion there and pretty soon you’re starting to talk about some real money.

U.S. Household debt: $14 trillion
U.S. Financial sector debt: $16 trillion
U.S. non-Financial businesses debt: $11 trillion
Combined Federal, State and local government debt: $8.5 trillion

When we saw those figures above from article in the paper (titled "American's addiction to borrowing led to crisis") over the weekend, we were a little embarrassed about getting so worked-up over the dollar amount of the Federal bailout of the finance sector of the nation’s economy that is being hammered-out on Capitol Hill as we write this and which when all is said and done after everyone up there on the Hill gets their hands on it will probably be on order of $1 trillion.

But will the resultant sausage the D.C. butcher shop is sure to grind-out be the way to do it?

Here is some of the language from the proposed bailout bill that gives the Secretary of the Treasury unprecedented latitude and power:

Necessary Actions.--The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act, including, without limitation:

(1) appointing such employees as may be required to carry out the authorities in this Act and defining their duties;

(2) entering into contracts, including contracts for services authorized by section 3109 of title 5, United States Code, without regard to any other provision of law regarding public contracts;

(3) designating financial institutions as financial agents of the Government, and they shall perform all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them;

(Italics ours)

$1 trillion and one dude who other than quarterly report-outs to Congress is completely on his own is not our idea of a well-rationed and deliberative bailout plan.

And its still early but will we see any meaningful reform? “Reform” as in nuking Fannie and Freddie as we know it because as quasi-governmental institutions they were the model of “oversight”. If by “oversight” one means an instrument of patronage and political leverage. Afterall, what would one really expect of such an arrangement other than what happened as those two organizations led the way in bad lending practices?

A toxic mix of crony capitalism, lefty do-goodism and political arm-twisting got us into this mess to begin with and the answer, thus far, is to put one man in charge of all of it?

One could, we suppose, make the argument that such drastic action is required to avoid a run on the banks to avoid a complete Depression era-like meltdown. Perhaps… But we are in no way convinced at this point, that this is the way to go about rescuing and “reforming” this country’s financial sector.

Stay tuned.