This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, February 23rd 2009. I'm Caleb Brown.

Most banks are fine, so why all the talk of nationalization and President Obama's

housing plan just how willing will Congress be to lean on unwise borrowers to pay

up.

Hado Institute Senior Fellow Gerald P. O Driscoll comments.

Explain the confusion here about nationalizing banks, what you're hearing versus what is actually well established about

the idea of nationalization?

Yes, well, first of all, there's a lot of imprecision in language. There are apparently actually some

who need out there who want to nationalize the entire banking system even though

a pick your figure certainly 90% of the banks are fine probably higher, possibly higher.

So you know why do you want to nationalize an institution that there's nothing wrong with.

It's an ideological position.

Leaving that aside, there is a legitimate feeling position. they keep recapitalizing a small number of very large banks

and so the feeling is uh... should discontinue or should the government just take it over

that's at least a rational debate

uh... and i guess uh guess what I would say is, okay, if you think the bank is insolvent, certainly it should be resolved. But you really want to see the government running very large financial

institutions uh... in effect we already have

seen that movie it's fainty may and Freddie mac and they're not doing such a good job of it

uh... so i guess the

the people advocate that the government actually take over

assuming that there are large and common banks that they take them over, what

are they going to do the day after and how we're going to keep it from not becoming extremely

...