>>"The global financial crisis is set to get worse, with a large US bank likely to collapse in the next few months, a former IMF chief economist has warned."
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>>http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7569903.stm
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>The interesting part is under our noses: "the home lenders would, in effect, be nationalised. "
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>Now, now... when they were making money, they were privatized. While they were making profits, the profit went to... shareholders. Now that they are about to kick the bucket, who is footing the bill? We, who have "ni luk jeli, ni luk mirisali" (neither onion ate, nor onion smelled (*)).
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>How about shareholders first losing the profits they made? After all, every move made was justified by the uppermost duty of every financial officer in any of these risky businesses was to maximize profits for the shareholders. If they have reaped the benefits, they should also lose them - and only then, if there's no other way to clean up the mess, should the tax money ooze in.
>
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>(*) the ordering of words etc was to fit the decameter - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_epic_poetry for the reasons

One should know few things before posting it. In case of Fannie/Freddy nationalization, as you put it, shareholders will lose all equity, i.e. total 100% loss. By the way, taxpayers and shareholders are usually the same people.