To-MAY-toe, To-MAH-toe

Obama Administration efforts to recapitalize the banking system made the rounds of the talk show circuit yesterday, as the prospect of bank nationalization or some derivative of it grows more likely. Perhaps one of the reasons why the term nationalization concerns so many (including me), is that history has demonstrated that once the federal government gets its hooks into something, it’s awfully difficult to get it out.

Economist Greg Mankiw has a great post up at his blog, where he reasons that whatever we want to call it – nationalization or pre-privatization – the sound of it does not bode well for capitalism in the long run.