Tomorrow, Treasury Secretary Geithner is scheduled to unveil his proposals for dealing with the financial crises. I will be measuring the proposals against the solution outlined by Ian Walsh on Friday: How to Perform Triage on the Banks and Stop the Bleeding

Not only is the financial situation  getting worse, but a lot of securities either really have no market (they're hardly ever sold) or the market price is actually below their probable long term value.  If the government is going to take over banks, or insure the securities, or set up a bad bank, they need to know whether they're solvent and how risky the securities they hold are—how likely they are to go bad in the future.  Once they know that, they know how much to pay, which banks to take over and which banks can be saved.