The men in the white sheets respectfully request your assistance

Let’s get this straight: All last week was spent trashing and demonizing the financial sector and whipping the public into a pitchfork-wielding frenzy and now the Feds want some help.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Sunday that help from the private sector was critical to get toxic assets off banks' balance sheets and help resolve a credit crisis.

And then there’s this:

"Our judgment is that the best way to get through this is if we can work with the markets," Geithner said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. "We don't want the government to assume all the risk. We want the private sector to work with us."

Having effectively blurred the lines between the public and private sector, we have zero clue what that statement means.

More on Congress’s waterfall down economy:

The tax plan approved by the House as revenge against a handful of obscenely greedy AIG executives would slam tens of thousands in the financial industry, many of them New Yorkers, who have nothing to do with AIG or any other wrongdoing.

And that would be just start of the collateral damage.

The levies are so draconian that major banks that took bailout money are threatening to give it back - defeating the purpose of jump-starting the economy with an influx of cash.

Yep, we're in good hands.

UPDATE #1: Heartbreak...

Fifteen of 20 American International Group leading bonus recipients have agreed to give them back in full, said New York's top legal officer who is probing into $165 million in executive pay at the troubled company bailed out by the U.S. government.

Which means, of course, there are still 5 brave holdouts who have resisted the lynch mob. Godspeed, anonymous greedy corporate execs, Godspeed.