You can have your 5 back, now give me back my two 10s

Investment banks (also called "broker-dealers") were at the center of the current financial crisis. They were the lynchpin of the the unregulated "shadow banking system" that took all the bad bets that are now choking global finance. Today, the last of the investment banks disappeared, as Morgan Stanley and the legendary Goldman Sachs chose to become normal, boring, government-regulated banks. Goldman, if you'll recall, was the pioneer of the investment-bank model. Other investment banks launched into their frenzy of reckless lending and borrowing in order to "be more like Goldman."

Now, recall that the CEO of Goldman for much of this time was Henry Paulson, who is now Secretary of the Treasury. He helped pioneer the business model that was directly responsible for the financial crisis. Investors handed Paulson & co. billions, and they wasted those billions.

Now, this same man is asking for $700 billion dollars of taxpayer money, and unlimited legal power with which to spend it, in order to bail out the same companies he once led. Many have complained about the fact that this deal gives the government no equity stake in the failed companies (in order to prevent things like this happening again), and does nothing to curb the incentive structures that led to the crisis in the first place. Without those precautionary measures, Paulson's bailout is mainly just a cash giveaway to finance companies.

So I ask: when facing a crisis, why should we give unlimited power to fix that crisis to one of the men who personally caused that crisis?

Update: Everyone in the Universe agrees with me.