With AIB and BOI share prices having quadrupled over the past few months thanks to increased hopes of a NAMA-based bailout from the taxpayer, it is interesting to note the similiarities with how the situation has developed in the US, as outlined in this piece by the Baseline Scenario guys. On why the administration has not shut down insolvent banks, Johnson and Kwak write:
One reason is that taking over banks has somehow been redefined as “nationalization,” with the images it conjures up of forced confiscation of property. Yet there are no guns involved here. Ordinarily, when an investor puts a large amount of new capital into a bank, it gets some measure of control in return. Yet Treasury has bent over backward to minimize its voting shares, beginning with the initial round of recapitalizations and continuing through the latest Citigroup bailout in February.
Perhaps after fighting off charges of “socialism” from the McCain campaign, the Obama administration is wary of any steps that could be described as nationalization. And so instead of insisting on its well-understood duty to shut down failing banks for the public good, it has tied its hands by taking this option off the table.