Forget Nationalization. Make them file bankruptcy.

[MrPerson]

Its what you and I have to do.

[MadMaddie]

1. I agree. I also believe if they are too big to fail then they

are too damned big. They did it to themselves.

[backscatter712]

2. Nationalization, or shall we say receivership, basically is a sort of bankruptcy.

That's where the entity throws up its hands, declares to the government "My finances are borked!", the .gov takes over, takes extreme actions such as selling off assets, writing off debts, and so on to either write the whole mess off (which can't really be done in this case) or find a way to make the entity solvent.

In this case, it involves writing off the bad assets, covering the bank's ass with taxpayer money. The difference between a Geithner/Paulson bailout and a nationalization is that at the end of the nationalization process, the government owns the bank and gets a piece of the revenues when the bank becomes profitable or is sold back into private hands.

Oh, and too big to fail is right. While nationalizing the banks, the government should break them up into manageable pieces, and regulate the fuck out of them, by bringing back things like Glass Steagall, so the assclown bankers won't be able to run the banks into the ground again without consequences, like prison.

[readmoreoften]

3. I'm not so sure I grasp the nationalization concept either. Because it won't be nationalization.

It will be:

(1) Taxpayers paying to restore something that corrupt CEOs will just run into the ground again. I don't trust anything less from Summers and Geither.
(2) If not bought with tax money, it'll be bought with printed fiat, which will probably work now, but I'm afraid that without imprisonment of the CEOs for breech of fiduciary duty they'll just think of it as free money and others will be irresponsible and this crisis will continue, and risk devaluation of the dollar if printing money is always "the answer."
(3) I don't see why we should socialize the loses and privatize the profits. Fuck it. If we buy it, we own it. It's ours now. Learn how to supersize fries, execs.
(4) Why haven't we made CDS's illegal, cracked down on naked shorting, and so on? What good is throwing money at a problem if you can't fix it? When is Obama going to denounce these people in a speech?
(5) If Obama wanted to get populist conservatives to trust him, he could move to prosecute and expose some of these criminals. Then they wouldn't approve of nationalization, but they wouldn't be able to claim that he's "in on it". And he needs to start doing some damage control on this one. He's an idiot if he lets them pin this on him. He can avoid that by taking a strong BIPARTISAN stance to prevent market theft and illegal trading.

Drawing a picture of a house of cards and setting it in front of a house of cards that has fallen doesn't mean that it hasn't fallen. His administration needs to be the one on the moral high ground exposing these criminals. He has the people's support. He even has Republican support on that.

[backscatter712]

5. In responser to number three.

Damn straight. That's the point behind nationalization. If we're going to be bailing out the banks, we should OWN the banks, at least temporarily. Then when we've thrown zillions of dollars of taxpayer money at them to recapitalize them so they can write off all those toxic derivatives and such, we, the taxpayer will also reap some of the profits when the bank becomes solvent again, starts making money again, and gets sold off to private hands for a handy profit.

Oh, and by owning the banks, we can fire those assclown executives, set some new ground rules and make sure the bank's run right.

[zagging]

4. Dear sir, I am sorry for your loss.

It is with the utmost respect that we extend our condolences for your loss. Let us be among the many to congratulate you on your many additions to our economic well being, but also let us be among the first to consider you at fault for your foolish avarice.

We wish you well, but are unable at this time to extent you credit, and we hope the stubborn extenuation of our good graces does not crash the whole fucking world, you egomaniacal MFer's.

Sincerely,

Eat Me.