Isn’t it socialism to nationalize industries? Whats unfair about that statement?…

It’s completely fair.

Albeit, these nationalization will surely be temporary. As (say) the Swedes did, Western governments will sell off their shares in the banks, once the crisis has safely passed.

But (to summarize that Financial Times article), in the short term, nationalization is the only mechanism for recapitalizing the financial sector, and getting credit flowing again. (Well, there was the Paulson “throw buckets of money out the window and hope the right people pick it up” mechanism, but even Paulson seems to have largely given up on that idea.)

the basket belonging to the king of outrageous debt practices…

Hey, I wish Paulson wasn’t the guy in charge. I wish George “27%” Bush wasn’t the guy on the White House Lawn, trying to calm the markets and reassure everyone that they have matter under control. I, and I’m sure at least 73% of the people listening, can’t get over the uncanny resemblace to his reassurances about how swimmingly things were going in Iraq.

But we’re stuck with those two until January, and the world economy isn’t going to wait.

If you see yields on Treasuries rise, as the market continues to crater, then you’ll know the jig is finally up. When the “flight to safety” stops meaning “buy Treasuries,” then this country, with its $10 trillion debt will be truly f****d.

There was a hint of this, today. Hopefully, just a bunch of large hedge funds dumping Treasuries to raise cash, and not a sign of things to come.

Anyway, things have moved beyond Paulson/Bernanke. We’re now talking about concerted action by the G7 Finance Ministers. And, yes, even the Financial Times says bank nationalizations (“socialism”, as you would have it) are inevitable.

Jacques, I never intended my list to be comprehensive, but rather illustrative of two things: (1) plenty of mistakes were made on both sides of the aisle over the last decade or more that contributed mightily to the current predicament, and (2) the fact that current champion of the little guys such as Frank (I could have easily chosen Chirs Dodd, with his sweetheart mortgage deal from Countrywide) were big fans of the greedy bastards before things went south.

Fannie and Freddie did not own ‘subprime’ mortgages, true, but they vastly, vastly increased their exposure to ‘Alt-A’ under pressure from largely Democratic voices in Washington. And Greenspan might not have been in charge of the agencies that would have or should have regulated, but for decades, he was THE undisputed voice on all things economic…