If this act passes, Paulson will have the authority to artificially assign arbitrary value to papers that the marketplace already valued at zero. His plan is to pay top-dollar for worthless paper, with money borrowed from you, me, everyone else and the next generation. -- That's why he does not want transparency.
Text of Draft Bailout Proposal:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business/21draftcnd.html?_...
Sec. 8. Review.
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
It could potentially be unconstitutional (perhaps granting this much non-reviewable power to the Treasury Department, an executive branch agency, violates the separation of powers), but I doubt it. Considering all the other power grabs that the executive branch has gotten past the Supreme Court, this one ranks fairly low.
If you're pissed off about the bailout, contact your legislators. It's their job to stop things like this, and they won't do it unless they know their constituents are really, really pissed off about it.
So Paulson will use the taxpayers' money to buy the papers at above market price, ensuring survivability of the banks, while the taxpayers hold the risk of further depreciation of the papers.