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WASHINGTON - To hear Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke tell it, there is only one plan to save the economy - use $700 billion in taxpayer money to take the worst of Wall Street's assets off its books.

But leading economists and financial thinkers argue that there are a host of alternatives that would reduce taxpayers' liabilities and perhaps more effectively address the urgent crisis in financial markets. Although these experts concede that the clock is ticking, they say different approaches have been dismissed too quickly.

While the government's plan is built around buying troubled assets, other options offer sharply different visions. "They presented this as a comprehensive, decisive solution, but it's clearly not comprehensive and probably not decisive," said Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The cost of a mistake could be huge. It could result in a catastrophic collapse of the U.S. financial system that could ripple across the world or in a staggering clean-up bill for taxpayers. At the core of the debate is whether Paulson, the former chief executive of Goldman Sachs now charged with rescuing Wall Street as Treasury secretary, and Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman and one of the leading academics on financial crises, are serving up the best possible recipe for purging the U.S. financial system of billions of dollars worth of distressed mortgage-related debt.

Under the administration's rescue plan, the Treasury secretary would have broad discretion to buy up to $700 billion worth of troubled mortgage-backed assets and other securities that Wall Street firms have been struggling to sell. Administration officials hope that once those assets are cleansed, money will flow freely through the financial system once again and that the government can hold onto the securities until they recover some of their value.

Many of the alternatives fall under four basic approaches:

Government as lender: Critics of the administration's plan argue that an alternative could be crafted to minimize the exposure of the government - and taxpayers - to risk. Johnson, the MIT professor, suggested that the government, instead of taking on the bad debt, could offer loans to troubled banks, allowing them to put up their sickened portfolios of mortgage-backed debt as collateral.

This would give the banks access to badly needed cash at attractive interest rates set by the government. But it would not completely let them off the hook for making those bad investments in the first place. Because government money would come in the form of loans, rather than an outright purchase of the risky investments, taxpayers would be offered greater protection.

Government as hedge fund: Some market analysts and fund managers worry that the Paulson plan would allow Wall Street to dump the worst kind of mortgage securities on the federal government. One solution could be the establishment of a fund that limits its purchases to profitable mortgage securities and other assets.

The creation of a $700 billion investment fund could help reinvigorate the business of trading mortgage securities, greasing the wheels of the credit markets by bringing in a new, cash-rich investor: the federal government. While this solution runs the risk of not cleaning up enough of the bad debt on firms' books, taxpayers could be more confident of getting their money back because the government would be se-lective about which securities it bought.

Mortgage breaks: Liberal thinkers say the government could intervene in the finan-cial system by addressing the ailing mortgages at the heart of the crisis. Under this approach, the government could reduce the amount of principal that struggling homeowners owe.

"It's about foreclosures, stupid," said John Taylor, chief executive of the liberal National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

One idea is for the govern-ment to take control of some mortgage-backed securities - most likely by buying them from financial firms - and then work to restructure the underlying loans into some-thing homeowners could af-ford. The value of the securi-ties, both those bought by the government and those in pri-vate hands, could improve as foreclosures and late payments drop. If so, financial firms holding mortgage-backed securities could see a recovery in their balance sheets.

Tax breaks for Wall Street: Conservative analysts take a different tack, though their criticism of the Paulson plan has been no less sharp. They say that because the proposal forgives Wall Street for its past sins, it creates an incentive for investors to behave irresponsibly in the future.

Some of these thinkers complain that the govern-ment's rescue punishes tax-payers too severely for Wall Street's mistakes. They pro-pose a cheaper alternative that calls for the repeal of the capi-tal gains tax for two years, which would provide Wall Street a stimulus to reinvigo-rate the financial system.

Accounting rules that re-quire banks to estimate the market value of their troubled mortgage securities would also be suspended for five years, giving financial firms the abil-ity to value these assets at prices more reflective of the market before the panic gripped Wall Street.