Basically, we’re all Swedes now. We have used all our bullets, and the boogeyman is still coming. Let’s pull out the bazooka and be done with it.

That bazooka is the nationalization of the banking system, which “is close to being insolvent.”

Matthew Richardson and Nouriel Roubini write:

As free-market economists teaching at a business school in the heart of the world’s financial capital, we feel downright blasphemous proposing an all-out government takeover of the banking system. But the U.S. financial system has reached such a dangerous tipping point that little choice remains. And while Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s recent plan to save it has many of the right elements, it’s basically too late.

Put your trust in these words; Roubini has yet to be wrong about the current crisis.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

15 replies on “United States of Sweden”

  1. We can not borrow indefinitely. We are already deep in debt which makes every Billion now critical. Which means there isn’t room in the stimulus for arts and crap. The stimulus needs to focus like a laser beam on the root of the problem which is getting housing to the bottom so people start buying again. (Jobs are a symptom)
    Obama needs to keep his eye on the ball.

  2. How do you “stimulate” housing prices to fall? Once the housing market bottoms out, all the sellers are screwed, as are all the people with upside-down mortgages who manage to hold on. Then all you’ve got left are a bunch of people who can’t qualify for crap mortgages.

  4. You give a big tax CREDIT to people buying an existing home.
    $50,000 – $100,000 big.
    People quit sitting on the side waiting for the bottom and start buying, there will be a rush as others fear they are missing the bottom.
    The tax credit is making up the difference between what is owed and what the property is actually going to sell for.
    If you made the credit an enticing $100K it would cost the government $100 Billion to get 1 Million houses bought up.
    That would be a better use of the stimulus than the current fiasco.

  5. I have always wanted to be Sweden. They have the prettiest football team, and according to a Berlin cabbie I talked to they are extremely polite, never puke in the cab, and tip well. Sounds good to me.

  7. @6
    That is true. I once had a Swedish fellow eating me out and he became ill (something about being allergic to sardines?) and puked my cunt full. I squished for a week.

  13. I’d happily be Swedish – they all have health care, clean cities, no homeless, and summer cabins on their own islands. You know they’re making money because alcohol costs twice what it costs here.

    Bring it on.

  14. 13
    they are not reproducing and are dying off and there is no one to take care of their old people so they have to import radical muslims from the Middle East. you can’t always find a Mexican when you need one.

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