What's in it for the Treasury?

The U.S. Treasury Department has been heavily involved in talks over the MLEC according to Bloomberg. Why, I wonder? It seems strange for a right wing Republican administration to interfere in free markets unless there is a very real systemic risk. Perhaps they know something about Citi we don't that is worrying them. In any event the more we find out about this attempt to bolster the system, the stranger it seems.

Update. Greenspan has been sticking the boot in again. According to the FT he opined:

What creates strong markets is a belief in the investment community that everybody has been scared out of the market, pressed prices too low and there are wildly attractive bargaining prices out there. [...] if you intervene in the system, the vultures stay away. The vultures are sometimes very useful.

This seems pretty reasonable. Providing an artificial mark via a non-open-market purchase of these assets into the MLEC, if that is indeed what is intended, will not be good for confidence.