This is just beyond belief:

President Bush on Tuesday announced a $250 billion plan by the government to directly buy shares in the nation's leading banks, saying the drastic steps were "not intended to take over the free market but to preserve it."

Nine major banks will participate initally including all of the country's largest institutions. Some of the big banks had to be pressured to participate in the program by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who wanted healthy institutions that did not necessarily need capital from the government to go first as a way of removing any stigma that might be associated with banks getting bailouts.

Emphasis mine.  I want to know how that pressure was brought to bear, and why on Earth it was necessary to buy shares in healthy banks at all.  "Removing stigma" is hardly an important enough reason to do that, when the result is nationalization!  This is absolutely insane.