Nationalization Gets a New, Serious Look

WASHINGTON — Only five days into the Obama presidency, members of the new administration and Democratic leaders in Congress are already dancing around one of the most politically delicate questions about the financial bailout: Is the president prepared to nationalize a huge swath of the nation’s banking system?

Privately, most members of the Obama economic team concede that the rapid deterioration of the country’s biggest banks, notably Bank of America and Citigroup, is bound to require far larger investments of taxpayer money, atop the more than $300 billion of taxpayer money already poured into those two financial institutions and hundreds of others.

But if hundreds of billions of dollars of new investment is needed to shore up those banks, and perhaps their competitors, what do taxpayers get in return? And how do the risks escalate as government’s role expands from a few bailouts to control over a vast portion of the financial sector of the world’s largest economy?

The Obama administration is making only glancing references to those questions. In an interview Sunday on “This Week” on ABC, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, alluded to internal debate when she was asked whether nationalization, or partial nationalization, of the largest banks was a good idea.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/business/economy/26banks.html

and.......

Nationalize Now

By Barry Ritholtz - January 26th, 2009, 7:12AM

We’ve been repeatedly noting that the fastest, fairest, cheapest, most efficient way out of the current credit and financial mess is Nationalization.

As we have seem over the past few weeks, the country’s biggest banks — Bank of America and Citigroup — are deteriorating rapidly. They will need far more bailout money beyond the $350 billion of taxpayer cash and guarantees they have already received.

Note that the money already dumped into the black holes of these two financial institutions far exceeds their net worth. And in exchange for this foolish investment, taxpayers have received just 6% of Bank of America, and 7.8% of Citigroup. This is absurd. How a 120% of a company’s market cap yields a single digit ownership stake is beyond my comprehension.

The solution to the banks problems, as well as this ridiculous investment posture, is relatively simple: Nationalize the banks, appoint new management, give them 6 months to spin out 10% of each of the separate viable pieces, with the taxpayer retaining the rest as passive investors. For Bank of America, they can spin out 5 major pieces: BoA, Merrill, Countrywide, a Toxic holdings company, and a Good holdings company. The derivative exposure gets wiped out, put into the toxic holding section.

Stock holders get nothing; Since bond holders would receive some pro-rata share in a liquidation, they get a convertible preferred in the new debt free firm, as well as an opportunity to lend to the new banks at an generous convertible rate.

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The current bailouts have shown themselves to be expensive, ineffective, and replete with Moral Hazard and other corrupting abuses. Not only are we wasting vast sums of money, but all too often, we are rewarding the incompetent management teams that created the mess in the first place. Its time to move past them.

Nationalize Now.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/01/nationalize-now/

That will stablize the markets and show the world we are serious.

If you want to know what an oligarcy is, just look at Mexico. Which nationalized everything years ago. Nationalization is looked at by some as socialism. Socialism it ain't. It just ensures that only a few will have it all. The way the ruling families of Mexico do.