Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is now on his third plan to spend the pile of cash Congress gave him.

First he was going to buy overvalued, risky mortgages from banks.

Then he altered his plan and took the initiative to also forcibly purchase stock in banking institutions. He mandated that banks both ailing and healthy sell stakes to the Fed lest certain banks be stigmatized by accepting a government bailout.

Now Paulson says he no longer wants to purchase any toxic mortgage assets from banks at all. After the banking takeovers, he doesn’t have enough money to dent the collapsing $11 trillion mortgage market anyway.

Instead, Paulson’s new plan to prop up the economy includes helping people increase their spending by making loans more available. This strategy involves taking garbage loans from the books of credit card companies, auto financiers, student loan providers and other financial institutions. The theory is, clean up the lenders’ books and they will be more willing and able to lend again.

But the ever-evolving rescue still isn’t locked in yet. Paulson has now announced that he is working with President-elect Barack Obama to come up with another new plan.

If all of this flip-flopping, mind-changing and backtracking doesn’t evoke a sense of foreboding in us, it should!

Remember, back in September, when Mr. Paulson sold the idea of the biggest bailout in world history to Congress? Back when, as the New York Timessaid, congressional leaders sat in “stunned silence” as they were told that America was falling into an apocalyptic abyss? Back when Paulson said that if taxpayers didn’t cough up $700 billion to get these toxic mortgages off the banks’ books, the whole system could go down?

What happened? Now, all of a sudden, the $700 billion Paulson received in order to purchase mortgages from the banks has turned into a giant blank check that he can spend as he sees fit—with little oversight or disclosure.

The Washington Postreports, “[F]or all this activity, no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight post established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste.” Treasury Department inspector general Eric M. Thorson said, “It’s a mess. … I don’t think anyone understands right now how we’re going to do proper oversight of this thing.”

No one outside of Paulson and Co. knows for sure where the money is going or how it is being used. (You can read here how certain banks are receiving billions in bailout money while still planning to pay out billions in bonuses.)

When cnsNews correspondent Fred Lucas asked the White House if there was a plan to eventually get government money back out of the banks, spokesperson Dana Perino said: “The president is trusting his team over at the Treasury Department to design this program, and he believes that they’re doing it the right way. I don’t have the details for you on it. So we’ll let them—we’ll just trust our treasury secretary and those that he’s tasked with to implement the program.”

Mr. Paulson may be the most trusted man in America.

But the simple fact is, nobody knows how to fix the economy—Henry Paulson, President Bush and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke included. They are all grasping at straws.

The fact that Congress could be convinced to give an individual, even if he is the treasury secretary, $700 billion to purchase toxic mortgages from banks (lest the whole system implode), and then allow him to spend the money in a completely different fashion than Congress authorized—with nary a word, and little oversight of any kind—shows the desperation within the inner circles of Washington.

The desperation is so real that American lawmakers took but a few days to sign over a $700 billion, no-strings-attached, blank check to one man, just because he claimed to have a solution. And, as we have seen, it was not even a good solution. It was just another shot in the dark at an impossible mess.

Now that the bailout plan is proving less than hoped for, the desperation is intensifying as each dollar of each new bailout band-aid fails to stop the financial bleeding. To give you an idea of how much trouble the system is in, for $700 billion, taxpayers could have purchased—lock, stock and barrel—every single one of the major banks in America, including Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of New York Mellon, US Bancorp and American Express. After that, taxpayers still would have had enough money left over to purchase Chevron, Devon Energy, Conoco Phillips, and Chesapeake Energy. The over $50 billion remaining could have purchased Goodyear Tire, Caterpillar and Boeing. The few billion remaining could have sent Thanksgiving Day turkeys to every family in America several times over.

And as massive as the $700 billion rescue package is, it is just a small piece of what the government has committed so far to combat the crisis. The Treasury Department, along with the Federal Reserve, has put on the line a whopping $7.76 trillion to prop up the system so far, according to a recent report by Bloomberg.

Even with this unprecedented, gargantuan amount of money, the stock market continues to deteriorate, corporate debt markets remain under severe stress, jobs are being lost at the rate of more than 200,000 per month, and the economy continues down the hill toward the cliff, with no visible signs of a turnaround.

Yet amid the worst economic crisis since possibly the Great Depression, America’s leaders blindly put their faith—and the country’s future—in the hands of a few individuals who, they hope, can somehow save the financial system.

Putting your trust in man—any man—is doomed to lead to failure. In Jeremiah 17:5, God says, “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.” Psalm 118:8 tells us, “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.” Psalm 146:3 says, “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” And Proverbs 3:5-6 instruct, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

In spite of these and other such clear instructions from our Maker, America is fighting financial folly with more financial folly. America’s economic problems cannot be fixed by any man. Because, at the root, America’s economic breakdown is not just the result of bad mortgages or poor banking practices, but is the result of the spirit in which business in America is conducted, the way people treat each other, and the underlying motivation behind banking and finance. In short, America’s economic breakdown is a direct result of its moral breakdown.

But there is a solution to today’s crisis.

“Here is the giant paradox,” wroteTrumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry. “America’s only hope is printed on the almost-worthless dollar bill! Will Americans face this financial disaster saying ‘In God we trust’? Or will we put our faith in men to solve the problem?”

America has gotten to the point where for individuals there is only one way out of this mess. And the solution doesn’t involve throwing money at the problem. Do we really believe what the dollar says? In whom do we really trust?