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Nationalize This

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18 pointssarvesh12 comments

If I remember correctly, the Swedish government nationalized their financial system in a way to ease the pain from the credit crunch, and it worked out well.

The main argument against these series of bailouts would be that it creates inflation of the currency. Of course, this is only be thought of now when we're attempt to fix infrastructure across the nation, or saving the jobs of workers, instead of bailing out banking systems too large to fail.

American businesses are operating at an unlevel field, partially because the criminalization of vertical integration (the Japanese do this for their automotives), compared to other nations in the world.

My 2c.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/worldbusiness/23k...

Thank you for the citation.

My problem with "nationalization" is that people treat it as some sort of atomic, unique thing, where we either "nationalize" or we don't.

In reality, it's way, way, way more complicated, and the debate borders on the useless, because how and what is nationalized, and how the nationalized assets are managed matters a lot, and nobody ever discusses those.

Right now, I see no great reason to believe that the government is staffed by people particularly likely to even try to use their brains to decide what to nationalize or how to run it, let alone succeed. Right now what I see are a bunch of politicians running rampant with no regard for reality... which always has the last word.

That's my problem with the bailouts. Putting politicians in charge of our companies to solve problem the politicians credibly created in the first place (without admitting it, and I fear they actually believe they are blameless, not just putting up a front) doesn't seem like a recipe for success.

In the situation of the financial sector's bailout, some had speculated it would have been better to have not done anything. It would leave us more money to allocate and loan (not give) the companies which employee the average American worker who doesn't live bonus to bonus.

As for nationalization, it should start at the Federal Reserve which is as much Federal as Federal Express. What a screwed up system we have where our government is forever in debt while we use The Federal Reserve Note as our currency.

I hate to reply with this sort of thing, but I gotta say "live bonus-to-bonus" is a great turn of phrase. Google says you're basically the second person to use it in the context of the current economy. (There are two others but not really the same context.)

(I hope there's a little room in the HN credos for some positive feedback.)

Or not: http://www.johannorberg.net/?page=articles&articleid=45

This reminded me of a quote from Fight Club: "Only after disaster can we be resurrected." Sometimes things need to fall apart so they can be rebuilt into something better.

The approach the United States government is taking is similar to using duct tape to fix a house. Its bringing short term stability but we may regret it in the long run.

Exactly. It remains unclear to me how the housing crisis can be "fixed" until the underlying home values fall in line with historical price:income ratios. That is, either real incomes must rise significantly, or real housing prices must decrease much more than they already have. Anything short of that will serve only to delay the inevitable.

If the downturn is slow and steady there may be time for adjustments, as opposed to a crash.

Actually, I think the best advice to let it happen as quickly as possible. Otherwise resources will be misappropriated thus making the problem worse.

I suppose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity will be good for America.

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