THE tumult in the markets is a clear sign that something is wrong: Namely a liquidity crunch that has seized up bank-to-bank lending, a key element to the health of the US — and the world — economy.

But questions remain regarding the proposed $700 billion bailout of the market by the US Treasury, questions that aren’t being asked, much less answered. The administration may be right to say that we must act fast, but is it fair not to question whether the solution proposed is the best and most economical one? The solution tabled by the White House has been to grant US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson carte blanche to decide what to do with the money.

Congress understandably balked at the prospects of giving the Treasury chief absolute, monarch-like powers to administer taxpayer money to bail out some of the world’s largest financial institutions with no accountability or transparency in the process.

A deal has been worked out that will release $250 billion immediately to stabilize the economy and an additional $100 billion to be used at President George W. Bush’s discretion. The remaining $350 billion will be subject to congressional review into how the money is spent. Congress will have only 15 days to contest future requests to dip into the remaining money.

THE aim is for the US government to buy the “bad apples” out of the basket of debt some major banks have incurred by doling out bad loans. This will hopefully free up liquidity so banks will resume a normal rate of lending to each other. Meanwhile, House Republicans are in revolt, demanding their own solutions that include a moratorium on capital gains taxes. This proposal arguably does nothing to deal with the liquidity crunch; it would benefit speculators the most.

The solution worked out by Congress has done little to address the fundamental question of whether this is the best way to confront this crisis. Former New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning finance reporter David Cay Johnston has questioned the motives of the bailout and launched a tough criticism of the media for diving wholeheartedly into promoting the administration’s claims.

“The fact that we had a couple of Wall Street banks fail — that’s capitalism!” said Cay Johnston in an interview on NPR’s On The Media. “If you look around, you’ll notice that banks are still making ordinary loans to ordinary businesses. Your mailbox is still filled with proposals to sell you credit cards and extend you debt. The Internet still has ads for these very toxic mortgages that are at the heart of this.”

Cay Johnston says people should be demanding to see the pricings of this deal — specifically an itemized list of banks’ illiquid assets, and how they value these assets — and ask who will most benefit from the bailout. Will this help Wall Street. or will it help Main Street? The administration says both, but some say the government may never recoup the money the Bush administration wants to spend on corporate socialism.

Meanwhile, the media have swallowed hook, line and sinker, the claim that this is an economic apocalypse and the only solution is to grant the Treasury huge powers with little accountability and pour billions of borrowed dollars into the very institutions that made poor decisions backed by a government guarantee to buy the bad apples.

Recalling how the media believed everything the Bush White House said to justify an invasion of Iraq, Cay Johnston wrote on the Poynter Institute’s media website Romenesko that the media are once again falling into the trap of not questioning the administration’s claims.

“As of now we are as a group behaving just as we did the last two times the administration sought to rush through a hastily thought-out, ill-conceived plan,” said Cay Johnston. “Why in the world are we being so gullible and naïve?”

By the way: Congress will end its session after a bailout bill is passed. Lawmakers will then go home to campaign. If the economic situation is so bad, why aren’t they staying in session to work through this mess? If this truly is an economic apocalypse, you’d think Congress would stick around to follow through on the little oversight it is willing to provide.