I was on a flight all day long, but was able to watch live TV and the testimony. These are my quick, rough impressions, although I haven’t been able to catch up on any of the post-game testimony here or elsewhere:

1) Bernanke made a distinction between the fire-sale price and the hold-to-maturity price and seemed to suggest the government would be paying the hold-to-maturity price. But how would it establish that in a fire-sale environment? Sen. Bennett tried to drill down on this and I’m not sure I ever heard a good answer.

2) It became clear a couple of times that even Paulson doesn’t know how this thing is going to work exactly. Essentially, he wants maximum authority and flexibility and then he’ll get a bunch of smart people in a room and try to figure it out.

3) Sen. Schumer’s idea of doing it in stages seems to make sense. Why not make some notional commitment of up to $700 billion, but dole it out in monthly tranches and see if the thing is actually working before going all in?