Double-whammy for Treasury?

MiamiHerald.com: "After the Treasury buys up their bad debts, businesses could write off the debt as a loss -- and pay less in taxes to the Treasury as a result. Banks and other financial institutions can conceivably write off billions of dollars in losses after they sell bad mortgage assets to the government.

The bailout measure allows as much as $700 billion of taxpayer money to be used by the Treasury Department to buy up distressed mortgage-backed securities. Those securities are now dead weight on banks' balance sheets, smothering their ability to lend to each other, businesses and consumers. If a company ends up selling its securities at a loss to the government, the amount of the loss may be applied toward a deduction on their corporate taxes -- meaning that in addition to the $700 billion, the U.S. Treasury may also see less money coming back in corporate taxes as a result of its own program."

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