It's Time To Nationalize Everything - Millennial Money with Cliff Mason

BIO

Cliff Mason is the author of Millennial Money. He is the Senior Writer of CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer, and has been that program's primary writer, in cooperation with and under the supervision of Jim Cramer, since he began at CNBC as an intern during the summer of 2005. Mason was the author of a column at TheStreet.com during 2007, which he describes as "hilarious, if short-lived." He graduated from Harvard College in 2007. It was at Harvard that Mason learned to multi-task, mastering the art of seeming to pay attention to professors while writing scripts for Mad Money. Mason has co-written two books with Jim Cramer: Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich and Stay Mad For Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer). He is 100% responsible for any parts of either book that you did not like. Mason has also had a fruitful relationship with Jim Cramer as his nephew for the last 23 years and will hopefully continue to hold that position for many more as long as he doesn't do anything to get himself kicked out of the family.

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Jan.27

5:02 PM ET

Tuesday, 27 Jan 2009

It's Time To Nationalize Everything

Posted By:Cliff Mason

Companies:General Motors Corp

We need a coherent plan for dealing with troubled companies, not just the financials but also the automakers that have borrowed federal money like General Motors [GM Loading... () ] and Chrysler.

If you ask me, we should nationalize everything we can get our hands on.

If the government can come up with a half-way decent reason for seizing a company, it should do it.

People have been looking at this problem entirely from the wrong angle. Everyone wants to know the best way to save the banks, the best way to save the life insurance companies that took TARP money, the best way to save the autos. I want to know how we can profit, as a nation, from the trouble all of these companies are in.

We have a unique opportunity here to buy low, nationalizing as many companies as we can now at little cost, and then sell high at some point in the future when the economy recovers. In a couple of years taxpayers could make a fortune on IPOs of companies that the government seizes now. It goes without saying that nationalization will let us fix-up the companies that need fixing, but the important point is that it's the way to do it with the most upside for you and me.

Now some people may object that governments don't do a good job running private companies. In general, I'm sure that's true, but we could hardly do a worse job than private sector's already done. If the state is going to bail out these companies, the state should be the entity that reaps the rewards, not existing shareholders.

We gave free enterprise a shot, now it's time try a different solution.