If mortgage companies start to feel like they're losing elbow room, it's probably because they're starting to get nudged by the Obama administration. The folks in the White House are planning to kick off a campaign to squeeze mortgage companies to lower payments for even more borrowers who are in trouble. The $75 billion program, financed by taxpayers, to keep homeowners from falling into default appears to be in trouble.

Mortgage lenders have increased their efforts to modify borrowers' mortgages, but most of them are still in a trial stage, which will last up to five months. Only a handful have been made permanent, which isn't good enough for Washington. The Treasury Department's assistant secretary for financial institutions, Michael S. Barr, told the New York Times, "The banks are not doing a good enough job," continuing, "Some of the firms ought to be embarrassed, and they will be."

It will not surprise anyone to learn that I am asked every day by someone where the trillions of dollars in world capital that were here on one day disappeared to on the next. No doubt many of our astute readers are getting the same questions from their friends and associates.

Perhaps some readers out there wonder where $245 billion of Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C) capital has gone and why they are surviving by a thread only at the graces of the American taxpayer. (Citi hit 97 cents a share during the day, closing at $1.02.) I will give you an example.

With the U.S. Treasury's $700 billion intervention bill -- commonly called the bailout bill -- nearing President Bush's desk for review and signature into law, a compelling question has risen in economic and taxpayer circles.

Given that the U.S taxpayer is funding the recovery, if not the bailout, of financial institutions and banks, are banks and financial institutions doing enough to show their gratitude to the people of the United States, the banking sector's lender -- and investor -- of last resort?

One standpoint argues they aren't, so says economist Richard Felson, and here's what Felson would like to see: In addition to equity stakes in each company that receives taxpayer assistance, the U.S Congress should require the company/bank to pay an annual fee to fund the administrative costs of a bank for low-income citizens and senior citizens.

The U.S. Treasury's $700 billion bailout bill is winding its way through the Congress.

To say the situation is dynamic and fluid would be the understatement of the year. The Congress, led by U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is likely to propose and obtain substantial changes in the legislation, changes it believes will better protect the U.S. taxpayer and more efficiently deploy the. funds allocated.

The American people, if public opinion polls are an accurate gauge, are skeptical of the plan at best, and at worst view it as rewarding large financial institutions and other companies whose flawed practices both perpetuated and magnified the crisis.

In addition, with an election up ahead in about a month, Congress (particularly the 435 representatives and 35 senators up for re-election) will be especially sensitive to public opinion, with many not wanting to go against it for fear of being voted out of office.

Is the bailout bill a solution?

With the above as a backdrop, BloggingStocks Wednesday asked three economists, David H. Wang, Richard Felson, and Peter Dawson, for their policy recommendation.

There is a well-known joke in political science that shows an elected public official sitting in his office, suddenly running to his balcony when he hears a large group of citizens heading off to a rally in the distance. He looks at them and says: "There go my people. I better go out there and lead them."

If the initial analysis of the U.S. Treasury's $700 billion bailout plan is any indicator of public sentiment, it looks like the people may be way ahead of their public officials -- or public officials are way behind -- depending on your perspective.

There's a sense that the people who will pay for the potential bailout/intervention -- typical citizens -- aren't getting enough in return. These critics say the U.S. taxpayer should get an equity stake as collateral for the loans they may make to various banks/companies, and that the taxpayer should also share in the profits, should they occur.

Further, some question why the taxpayer is being used to bailout the very institutions that were factors in the start and growth of the financial crisis in the first place.

Still others argue why the U.S. Treasury is clamoring to secure hundreds of billions of taxpayer money to prop-up financial institutions and isn't doing more to help homeowners refinance their mortgages to lower rates, and in the process prevent foreclosures that were a major factor in the development (and continuation) of the financial crisis.

And others are wondering why CEO/executive salary caps can not be put in place. If a CEO or an executive doesn't want to participate in the bailout program for fear of not getting a large payout or golden parachute, even though it's in the public interest to do so, why should it be in the public interest to grant his/her company a loan?

Financial eras, like social periods, are often defined by moments or epiphanies when decision makers and/or citizens realized that a serious flaw/mistake/problem was occurring through time, and across space, and needed to be corrected.

The ever-incisive FT columnist and economist Martin Wolf describes one contemporary concern that's likely to be addressed: the failure to align the interests of managers with those of investors.

My BloggingStocks colleagues Peter Cohan and Zac Bissonnette have also written on the subject on several occasions in this space, and now the FT's Wolf has assembled additional data that may very well lead to public policy changes, both in Wolf's United Kingdom and in the United States.