You're dead right to describe the bailout as a coup - in fact, it's worse than that; to all intents and purposes it's a management buyout of the American financial and political systems.

I've been blogging about this since last Tuesday (to anyone who's willing to listen) - there is absolutely no normative difference between the proposed operation of Paulson's bailout and Gaetano Salvemini's description of Mussolini's economic theory as being that 'profit is private and personal, loss is public and social'.