by Calculated Risk on 1/26/2009 01:30:00 AM

From the NY Times: Nationalization Gets a New, Serious Look

[M]ost 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 ... what do taxpayers get in return?

Does this mean "Nationalization"?

So far, President Obama’s top aides have steered clear of the word entirely, and they are still actively discussing other alternatives, including creating a “bad bank” that would nationalize the worst nonperforming loans by taking them off the hands of financial institutions without actually taking ownership of the banks. Others talk of de facto nationalization, in which the government owns a sizeable chunk of the banks but not a majority...

That has already happened ...

I say to-may-to, you say to-mah-to.