This is only the start, of something much scarier.
Well the World's financial system is in such bad shape, that the only way to alleviate it is to put the whole system in bankruptcy, under the trusteeship of respective national Central Banks. They will have to re-order and re-organize the absolute detritus of worthless paper floating (swaps, puts..all forms of arbitrage in promissary notes that have no expectation of being exercized in financial meltdown) around now, of which toxic mortgage derivatives are only the smaller part, the larger part being the derivatives of currency trading that now account for many times, perhaps a 100 times, the world's economic production to which they have nominal claim.
When that starts to collapse, and it will, then the we can expect hyper inflation, a complete collapse of banking and credit facility, and global chaos. It might be next ot impossible to trade currencies at any rate. The only solution is to re-establish the Bretton Woods agreement, locking in currency exchanges within narrow margins by government fiat, de-facto nationalization of the banking systems and credit facilities, and declaring null and void ALL Free Trade agreements.. which will allow national governments to manage a rebuilding of industry and agriculture on a national basis at its most essential basis, and allowing it to protect its the value of its currencies. In its current format our currencies are worthless in a real sense, and once that becomes apparent a global panic and collapse will ensue.
Paulson the ring master of this charade in Washington is a diehard Wall Street Free Marketeer and Monetarist. He is staving off collapse with the tools that created the crisis in the first place. His primary aim is to save the value of investments, an impossible task in the collapse of the productive, physical economies and currencies. The 'bail-out' has no chance of working. We need a new breed on National Treasury Secretaries, not committed to the mistakes of the past. None of Paulson's cronies have an inkling of how massive the problem is, they are throwing snowballs at a raging dragon. Frankly some to the current gang belong in jail.