After spending more than a month paying attention to everything but the financial crisis, the Obama administration has moved with surprising speed since Monday to flesh out its plan for saving the banks. Maybe it was the weak Dow, or maybe it was the lynch mob on Capitol Hill that threatened to sweep away any hopes of working with Wall Street. Whatever the impetus, we’re happy to see the administration finally attempting to deal with the country’s most urgent crisis. As for its proposed solutions, we like some better than others.

The administration’s request for the authority to seize and wind down insolvent non-bank financial firms is long overdue. The chaotic bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the disastrous bailout of AIG made the need for a third option clear. One (perhaps the only) institution that has worked well throughout this crisis is the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. A similar institution with the power to seize non-depository firms could have overseen the orderly unwindings of Lehman and AIG.

The administration’s plan is flawed, however, in that it would center these powers in the Treasury rather than an independent agency less vulnerable to political pressure. It also goes too far by formalizing the Treasury’s independent authority to make loan guarantees, asset purchases, and stock purchases to prevent a firm’s collapse. These are the very policies that have proved woefully inadequate up to this point. The power to force large insolvent financial institutions into receivership should be used instead of asset purchases and stock injections, not in addition to them.

Speaking of asset purchases, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner finally released the details of his plan to create a public-private partnership to buy toxic assets from banks. It is unfortunately as bad as we thought it would be. Intentionally or not, the plan is structured to transfer, as much as possible, the losses on bad assets to taxpayers.

It would work like this. The Treasury would partner with private entities, like hedge funds, to buy pools of mortgage-backed securities from banks. More than 80 percent of each purchase would be financed through a non-recourse loan from the FDIC, using the assets as collateral. Any assets that appreciate in price would yield profits that the Treasury and the private entities would split 50/50. Any assets that go bad could be forfeited to the FDIC, with the taxpayer eventually eating the loss.

It is no mystery why the markets liked this proposal. For investors, it presents an opportunity to buy the best of the banks’ distressed assets for less than they are probably worth. For the banks, it presents an opportunity to offload their most toxic paper for more than it is probably worth. The investors get to keep the good assets; the taxpayers get stuck with the junk.

Geithner’s plan also faces two logistical problems. First, mark-to-market accounting rules might cause the plan to backfire. Let’s say a healthier bank like Wells Fargo decides to take advantage of this program and sell a pool of mortgage-backed securities to Geithner and Co. for 70 cents on the dollar. This becomes the new market price for these assets, even if their underlying value — the cash flow from people paying their mortgages — turns out to be higher. Mark-to-market rules would force a weaker firm like Citigroup to mark its assets to the new price, which could precipitate the collapse we are trying to avoid.

The government could avoid this problem by temporarily loosening mark-to-market rules — something policymakers are finally showing an inclination to do. But that wouldn’t solve the second problem: The plan relies on the heroic assumption that the government can still find willing partners in the private sector after last week’s Bonusgate inquisition, in which the House reacted to public outrage over compensation at AIG by passing a 90-percent retroactive tax on bonuses paid to employees at bailed-out firms.

If anything, Geithner’s public-private partnership would be more offensive than the AIG bonuses: It would very plainly use taxpayer funds to finance new Wall Street fortunes. How many news stories do you think it would take to generate hearings, public recriminations, and ex post facto laws targeting those fortunes? How many hedge-fund guys want to find out?

Given Congress’s recent behavior, it is easy to see why the administration likes the idea of the public-private partnership: It would bypass Congress entirely. But this plan is unlikely to work, and even if it did, the cost to taxpayers would be unacceptably high. The better plan is to obtain the resolution authority required to guide insolvent firms through an orderly bankruptcy. This will involve working with Congress and burning through political capital that the administration would rather save for battles over card check, cap-and-trade, and health care. Too bad. It is long past time for Obama to put aside his pet ideological causes and get down to business.