Nationalizing U.S. Banks

I've been listening to numerous Bloomberg interviews from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and found a somewhat controversial recurring theme. In an interview with NYU's Nouriel Roubini, he stated that the nationalization of our major banks might be the best option given our current situation. With his research estimating $3.6 trillion in total credit losses, he has good reason to believe that nationalization might be the only alternative. As of this month, only $1.1 trillion has been written down, meaning that the delerveraging process might only be in its jeuvinile stage. George Soros also stressed the point that banks will need an imense amount of recapitalizing. If this recapitalizing doesn't come from the private sector, the government will be forced to increase their intervention. A later interview with Nasim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, revealed a similar outlook. Currently, we have socialized losses and privatized gains (crazy, I know). Taleb believes that we should socialize the profits by nationalizing the banks, giving the government the chance to sort out the assets. Once the banks are solvent, they would then be sold back to the private sector. Easier said than done when the government can barely run the post office. However, in the coming months, this may prove to be a very viable option in order to steer clear of a "zombie bank" type situation that succeeded in bringing Japan to its knees.