In reply to woolsack:
> Staggering performance here: £24,000,000,000 lost in one year
>
Which is equivalent to saying the value of businesses and property purchases that were funded by the bank's lending have fallen by £24bn in 2008. Putting aside the value destruction from the ABN acquisition, the losses are a function of the worsening state of the economy, and the treasury are cleary worried that there are a lot more to come.
Effectively it's nationalisation because the consequences of bank failure will be even worse than what has gone before. It's not so much bailing out the banks as bailing out the economy/ a capitalist society as we know it.