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Without Clarity, We're Stuck in a Down Spiral

By Jim Cramer

 About this article:
 Are the banks already "nationalized?" My friend David Reilly over at Bloomberg penned a piece this morning saying it's already happened. But then the obvious response is, if we are nationalized, then why is there still independence? Why is Vikram Pandit able to say he wants to keep Banamex (which he should), and why is Wells Fargo able to pay that huge dividend, a totally inconsistent payout that Peter Eavis highlights today in an excellent piece about capital ratios and how Wells' is inferior to JPMorgan's yet only JPM cut the dividend. And why are the same boards of directors and officers that ran Citigroup and run Bank of America , the two acknowledged problem kids (at least acknowledged by the banks), still there if we are nationalized? Which brings us to the semantics of the situation. Reilly points out we have nationalization of...

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