housing bailout

housing bailout
Weer you aware that the UK and Germany have also nationalized their housing market? UK bailout is 90 Billion?

I forgot Germany's and Switzerland's (or Norway or something).

What are your thoughts on this if any?
- were - (opening post)

I'm aware. Capitalism is failing.

On Sunday and Monday European governments and private banks bailed out no less than three major banks—Germany’s Hypo Real Estate, Britain’s Bradford & Bingley and the Dutch-Belgian Fortis group. Their action was followed by intervention in Iceland on Monday when the government in Reykjavik took over control of Glitnir, one of Iceland’s biggest banks.
Of the four banks, Fortis is by far the biggest. It ranks among Europe’s top 20 banks and has a global workforce of 85,000. It is active in 50 different countries and its involvement in international banks and financial institutions stretches from the heartland of Europe to Eastern Europe (Poland), central Asia (Turkey) and China. The affiliated Fortis insurance group is one of the 10 biggest insurance companies in Europe.

According to the Dutch daily Trouw in a recent commentary, “American misconduct was the origin of the crisis. For years both the state and the citizens ran up an absurd number of debts, giving the impression that they would never have to be paid back.”
The alternative, according to Trouw, “is another form of capitalism, known as Rhine capitalism.... This type of capitalism also creates prosperity by allowing business to compete freely on markets. But it has more securities built into it.... Luckily here we have maintained our differences. Luckily here the state and the citizens have fewer debts than in the US. And luckily we now know the direction in which we must develop to create prosperity without winding up as a casino economy.”
The crisis of Fortis and a growing number of banks across Europe is testimony to the contrary—the inextricable involvement of European finance houses in the finance crisis reveals their vulnerability to precisely such a “casino economy.”
Across the border the Dutch business daily NRC Handelsblad struck a much more sombre note in an editorial last week: “If for no other reason, the current financial crisis is a historic event because no one can maintain any longer that unlimited free trade automatically leads to a better world. And the old liberal fairytale that the market always corrects itself has also been discredited.... The late summer of 2008 will go down in history as the moment when the last political ideology of the 20th century experienced its demise. Almost 20 years after what looked like the definitive defeat of communism, the victor from those days is also down for the count. Both Cold War camps are now washed up. It will take a couple of years before the bankruptcy crystallises out. Then the 20th century will finally be over, just as the 19th century only ended in 1914.”
The paper does not spell out the implications of its own analysis, but the fact is that the bankruptcy of 19th century capitalism heralded an era of wars of unprecedented brutality and the world’s first successful social revolution in Russia.