Wall Street put a gun to the head of the politicians and said, Give us the money--right now--or take the blame for whatever follows. The audacity of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's original bailout proposal was reflected in what it refused to say: no explanation of how the bailout would work, no demands on the bankers in exchange for the public's money. Treasury's summary of the plan included this chilling statement: "Section 8. Review. Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are nonreviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." In other words, no lawsuits by aggrieved investors or taxpayers allowed. No complaints later from ignorant pols who didn't know what they voted for. Take it or leave it, suckers.

Both political parties may submit to this extortion because bending over for Wall Street instruction, their usual posture, seems less risky than taking responsibility. Paulson and Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke exerted intimidating pressure because previous efforts to restore investor confidence had failed, as their slapdash interventions worsened the panic. And the Fed was running out of money. Nearly three-fifths of its $800 billion portfolio is now loaded with junk, the mortgage securities and other rotten assets it took off Wall Street balance sheets.

Despite its size, the gargantuan bailout is still designed for the narrow purpose of relieving the major banks and investment houses, in the hope that this will restore order to economic life. There are lots of reasons it will fail. Washington's money might pull firms back from the brink, but that does not guarantee that banks will resume normal lending, much less capital investing. Likewise, global investors have been burned and may refuse to pump more capital into the wobbly house of American finance.

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