Since the Republicans in the Senate have preemptively told our good President that failure to re-appoint Bush judges would be met with a possible filibuster of his appointments, maybe two can play that game.

Maybe we need to demand that someone in the House Democratic leadership should declare that any meddling by the US Supreme Court in the Franken/Coleman matter may subject the justice or justices voting to take the case, to an Impeachment proceeding (even without a 2/3 support for conviction in the Senate-- see William Jefferson Clinton).

The Constitution provides that Justices "shall hold their Offices during good Behavior" and I think meddling in this would be exemplary of bad behavior--see Bush v. Gore.

I love the idea which has apparently taken hold in both the mainstream media and the blogosphere that somehow our President and his economic advisers are either too stupid or too timid to take the clearly appropriate action to fix the banking crisis.

"Geithner should have closed Citigroup and its ilk and had the FDIC take over management, sold of all the "toxic assets" and re-privatized, all lickety split; and the longer they wait to do this will only make it more expensive in the long run."  The previous statement is now a given virtually across the entire spectrum of thought.

We're not talking about Bank Of The Wilderness in Podunk, Missouri that got in over its head, where you can have one of its competitors take it over rather swiftly.  And forget the inability of the FDIC or any other federal agency to manage the wind down of these enormous financial behemoths, because there are no institutions of our government that could do this.  Let's just ignore that little detail for the moment.

Let's just focus on the question of cost.  How much would it cost to do this?  No one, of course, is suggesting that it would be cost free to the taxpayer; just that it will cost more the longer they dillydally.

So who reading this post will call their Congressperson/Senator and demand action on this?  Who will demand that Congress immediately appropriate all sums necessary to carry out this apparently universally agreed upon action no matter the cost?  Should Congress appropriate $1 trillion?  $2 trillion?   $3 trillion?  Because that is what nationalization would cost.  How many of our representatives would actually vote for this plan?

Let's get real people.  There isn't and never was any magic bullet to solve this problem.  There isn't and never was any consensus in Congress or among the American people on how to proceed.  Polls showing majority support for "nationalization" are as phony as the day is long.  Throw in the actual costs.  Ask people do you support nationalization if the cost is an additional $3 trillion in borrowing by the US Government?  What do you think the response would be to that?  My guess is less than 2% approval.

Can we stop pretending that the financial problems of this country are being exacerbated by a lack of intestinal fortitude or brainpower on the part of the Obama Administration? 

Propping up Citigroup and B of A with $100 billion +/- and allowing a little time to see if some of the problems work their way out as they usually do in a capitalist system, may not be the dumbest option available to us.  Especially when the alternative is ask the American Congress and public to immediately pony up trillions to satisfy the demands of Stiglitz, Roubini, Krugman, as well as Senators Shelby and Graham for a magic bullet.