Here’s the three-point program for determining how the $700 billion of the Paulson bailout plan will be deployed: 1) Listen to what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says he’ll do with the money; 2) Wait a few weeks; 3) Watch him do the precise opposite.

When Lehman Brothers went down in September, the financial system faced a crisis. Paulson needed the flexibility to adjust to dire and unpredictable circumstances, but in retrospect his conduct verges on bad faith. His $700 billion program is called the Troubled Assets Relief Program for a reason: It was premised on relieving financial institutions of their troubled assets through government purchases of them.