Nice sensible editorial about bank nationalization in the NYT today. It's hard to tell sometimes just how much the "fundamental abhorrence of nationalization" meme is actually felt or just generated by the press as the natural countervailing theme to the suggestion that the government is considering going down that road. In fact, this is where the whole "tea party" nonsense should really be directed. (Speaking of, 'tea party' sounds vaguely like it should be a euphemism for some kind of trendy sex party which only some people understand right? "Jamie is going to another tea party this weekend. He really needs to slow down." "Oh, yeah, sure, that's disturbing...I think")
But anyhow. While the outrage over the stimulus and the foreclosure stuff is pretty misguided, if a bit more for the former than the latter, the outrage over the bank bailouts is legitimate and should be felt by both conversatives and liberals alike. Conversatives claiming any sort of populist bearing SHOULD be pissed about sloppy turnovers of taxpayer money to megabanks which, if they weren't feeling the moral hazard before, almost CERTAINLY are in the brave new world of endless TARP. But we're not going to do nothing. Temporary nationalization should be held up as the way for taxpayers to punish the leadership of these institutions for their profligacy rather than feeding it.
Of course the cynical money might say that conservatives are using this as an opportunity to use the bank bailout to tarnish the stimulus bill, which clearly wasn't really succumbing to their critiques taken alone. Never you mind the past 8 years of stunning and unprecedented complicity between the Bush government and the country's elite financial interests, reject Obama's culture of bailout! Yeah, that sounds about right, actually. Crafty bastards, aren't they.
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