Wall Street is experiencing what it must feel like to file for personal bankruptcy: It's painful, it's a little humiliating, but, damn, it will feel good not to have that debt hanging over me anymore. I can move on with my life and promise to be smarter with my finances.

On the brink of collapse, the troubled U.S. financial system could be about to wipe the slate clean with an unprecedented proposal from the Treasury Department. Treasury secretary Hank Paulson unveiled the details presented to Congress over the weekend, which essentially amount to this: Give me $700 billion, and I'll take care of the toxic waste that's corrupting so many bank balance sheets.

While Wall Street cheered the news late last week, few in Washington or on Wall Street are celebrating the development. It's risky, it's expensive, and it's not going to be easy. But it's hard to argue that the alternative—letting the U.S. and global economies continue to spiral downward for some unknown period of time—was the better choice.

Taxpayers have every right to be irked. The request calls for raising the national debt ceiling from $10.6 trillion to $11.3 trillion. Largely unregulated, Wall Street raked in the money when credit was easy, creating the markets and the mess that remained after the housing market collapsed. And now the government is bailing them out at the expense of the American public. The banks get to move forward, while the cash-strapped working class gets saddled with the long-term expenses from bailing them out.

The crisis has so far claimed the lives of two investment banks and forced another into the arms of a giant commercial bank. But it's far from certain that Wall Street will emerge from this chapter with any newfound self-reform. When the next new risky creative type of financing is developed, bankers will most certainly eat it up with reckless abandon as always. And why not? If it fails, Paulson's plan seems to suggest, Uncle Sam will help us out.

But Paulson's plan will not be a panacea. By buying up the troubled assets, the government will essentially force the banks into selling them, which will create huge losses on their books. Moreover, as Felix Salmon points out, there are many questions about just how these assets will be priced. Banks still hold these assets not because they can't sell them, but because they are unwilling to sell them at the deeply discounted prices being offered for them. Will this really only cost $700 billion? It's anyone's guess. Remember how little Congress expected the Iraq war to cost in 2003.

All this means we will continue to experience some short-term pain. Executives at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, the last two remaining independent investment banks, reportedly continued to weigh their options over this weekend. It's far from clear that Paulson's bailout will enable them to move forward as independent firms. (Update:Sunday night, the Federal Reserve announced that Morgan and Goldman would become bank holding companies. For more, read here.)

The Dow may have surged on Thursday and Friday, but the markets will likely continue to experience volatility in the months to come. Moreover, while Democrats and Republicans have so far appeared to be in unison on this matter, there are no guarantees this will sail through Congress by the end of this week as Paulson hopes. It's a monumental request, and it shouldn't be rushed through without some serious questioning.

And of course, the execution of this plan will be the responsibility of a new administration and potentially a new Treasury Secretary.

Nobody ever said starting over would be easy.