Friday, October 3, 2008

Nationalize. Then privatize.

Here's my approach, via Calculated Risk:

"From the Financial Times: Dutch government takes over Fortis units

The Dutch government on Friday re-negotiated last weekend’s bail-out of Fortis in order to buy all of Fortis’s Dutch operations for €16.8bn, including its Dutch insurance operations and the Dutch operations of ABN Amro.
...
Wouter Bos, Dutch finance minister, said the Dutch state took the decision after seeing how Fortis faced greater liquidity problems this week following the rescue.
...
The Dutch government will privatise the Fortis and ABN Amro operations after calm returns to the markets, it said.
Nationalize. Then privatize. That is a proven approach. It will be interesting to see if the Dutch approach works better or worse than the Paulson plan. "

Precisely. Nationalize. Then privatize.

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