Billionaire George Soros today branded US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson’s planned $700bn (€477bn) rescue package “ill-conceived” and suggested that the money would be better deployed acquiring equity in troubled financial institutions.

Soros, who chairs Soros Fund Management, today wrote that the US Congress “would be abdicating its responsibility if it gave the Treasury secretary a blank cheque. The bill submitted to Congress even had language in it that would exempt the secretary’s decisions from review by any court or administrative agency – the ultimate fulfilment of the Bush administration’s dream of a unitary executive”.