First NATIONAL City Bank -- Nationalization Upon Us?

Commy wrote:

DriftingByTheStorm wrote:

There is a LOT of buzz about bank nationalization going around in the last few days,
starting with a bank formerly known as First National City Bank -- that is, of course, Citibank.

Given the tumultuous events befalling the banking industry,
how do people on this boar feel about the idea of bank nationalization?

Do you think that the country would be better served by having direct government control over banks in this time of crisis?

If this were to happen, common stock holders would most assuredly be wiped out through share dillution.
Do you view nationalization as "fair" in this regard, as investors (many bank stock holders being retirees and elderly, relying on dividend income) were waging their risk\reward on the seemingly obvious premise that free market capitalism would sustain, and the government would not interfere unduly with private enterprise?

Is it really in our best interest to let corrupt goverment further marry itself to corrupt private banking enterprise?

Citibank is under $3 a share going in to close today.
You are going to start hearing a lot more about this topic in debate on the news in coming days,
that is a near guarantee.

Anyone?

I don't agree with nationalizing the banks, but what's an alternative solution? in your opinion, what should be done with citigroup?

I'll be blunt, Commy:
I don't think there is much that CAN be done.
Even the establishment's own most noted economic reporter, Mr. Paul Krugman of the NY Times, thinks the "Bad Bank Plan" is a sham.

In fact, Peter Schiff is on CNBC with Kudlow, as i type, arguing against both nationalization and the "aggregator bank" bullshit.

I think this is going to be one fuck of a storm.
And i'm pretty sure that we will probably get a "aggregator bank" or whatever you want to dress it up as, REGARDLESS of its ACTUAL effectiveness.

Why?
Because it is the only thing conceivable that, however irrationaly, addresses the concerns of THE BANKS.
What do i mean by that?

The very act of the government overpaying the banks for their "troubled assets", reinflates the banks' asset sheets, alleviating some of their pressures.

Krugman's balls on closing statement, "I’m not dead set against this proposal — but I’m still waiting for some explanation of why this is supposed to be more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" reflects the overall stupidity of this scenario.

At the same time the government is with one hand giving money to the troubled banks, removing these assets from their books, it is with the other hand putting a heaping pile of worthless shit on their own troubled balance sheets.

If we consider "the economy as a whole" (meaning both public and private aspects) to be our "Titanic", then the act of moving that potentialy multi-trillion dollar black box of derivatives losses from the private sector to the public sector does NO good.

What do you prefer?
Corporate insolvency and collapse that creates crisis, that leads to government insolvency and collapse,

or do you want to delay corporate collapse by over burdening government, causing it to fall first?

I don't have an answer for you Commy, because if i did, i would be paid one HELL of a salary,
because all the kings horses and all the kings men STILL can not put this economy back together again.
A new king and new men won't fare any better. This feels like end phase inflationary fiat economy terminal illness to me. But it isn't even only that. I've been reading Caroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope, and his basic opening thesis is that Western Civilization is (and has been for 40 years) in its declining 2 phases of population demographics, while China and the east were to be just entering their "Population Type B" by the year 2000 (Quigley wrote all this back in the early 60's). His thrust is essentially that as the Western world goes in to population decline, the eastern world is undergoing intense internal pressures (the kind that spurred our "great American century", when we were in the same population phase) that FORCE it to be more competitive and to incur MORE GROWTH. This is paramount, and he promises to spend much of the next 1,200 pages dancing around the point.

What you are witnessing is not only what is likely the terminal phase of a fiat economy, but a global economic paradigm shift which will necessarily mean the reshifting of power away from the civilization in decline, towards the one in its prime. The wild card that gets me, and something i can only dream that Quigley could answer (since he died before the internet revolution), is how and IF Western Civilization has managed to "infiltrate" or diffuse in to eastern culture enough for us to either stay in the running, intergrate, or otherwise manipulate our way out of collapse. In otherwords, has Western Civilization somehow managed to truly become the "world religion", thereby ensuring its survival?

Outside of that possibility, i think we are in for hard times.
The ongoing massive bubble in US Treasuries is looking ready to burst at any minute, and when THAT market comes crashing down, guess what goes flying through the roof? INTEREST RATES.
Here is a pretty good article from 1\18:
How the Treasury Bubble Will Burst and Why

Peter Schiff was brilliant just now on CNBC.
Some relevant conversation, for sure.
I'll post it when it is up.

EDIT:
Btw, here is a clip of globalist henchman Henry Kissinger discussing with fellow Bilderberg insider, Charlie Rose, about the "necessity" of a "new world order" and -- as Charlie suggests (almost guaranteed to have read Quigley himself) -- "there has been a shift from the west to the east". I think this one exchange is pretty telling. It shows that this entire scenario is a preexamined, foregone, and at least superficially "understood", by those running the world. If this entire collapse is NOT part of the plan, and we are truly in "contingency" mode, then i would be none too enthused about the outcome (ie. people like Gerald Celente and Jim Rogers are both probably right about a lot of things).