US bank nationalisations: The White House never sleeps

President Barack Obama does not want to own America’s big banks. But he will be hard pressed not to end up with at least a big chunk of Citigroup. That seems to be the implication of the US government’s statement on Monday that it wants its banks to be “appropriately capitalised with high quality capital”. The administration hasn’t spelt out quite what kind of capital it has in mind. But it has said that any new capital will be in the form of a special type of preferred shares that convert into...