Nationalisation has never been so popular

The UK government could never have foreseen that during their time in office, they would nationalise the high street banks and what's more with the support of the opposition and the City in general. We live in very strange times indeed.

Although today's announcements from the UK Chancellor are somewhat short of real nationalisation, it is as close as anyone could have dreamed. The £50billion may or may not solve the confidence of banking investors and customers, only time will tell. But the guarantee by the tax payer of inter-bank credit is the real deal. If this security gets banks dealing with each other and brings normal banking operations back it will be worth the risk. What's now required is for the rest of the world to put in place similar arrangements.

The £50billion is a tax payer's risk investment and should bring forth a profit if the global crisis subsides, without producing too much more blood on the carpet. The credit guarantee is more of a loan and this too should bring the tax payer a return.

The questions that nationalised banks will have to answer are very fundamental and the details of the government's proposal will need to be studied closely before being accepted. For example how will the boardroom be affected?

Civil servants on the boards of banks is a pretty horrific thought but perhaps the rehiring of old gunslingers just retired from banking might be good, to use their experience to marshal the business and also prepare for the mega changes to the financial system that are now certain.

One good thing might be the reorganisation of the banks compensation schemes as it is important to retain the goodwill of the public and huge City bonuses will not do that.

This might be the time that the rationalisation of remunerations in the City are finally able to be sanitised. The reason is that the whole global banking system will be doing the same thing preventing top earners threatening to leave to rich pickings elsewhere. There will be no elsewhere!

It is possible that other governments will follow the UK lead and begin a nationalisation of their threatened banks. Could we end up where the finance industry began some 300 years ago? With single large government banks dominating and hundreds of boutique banks in family hands, offering innovation and risk based services?

Will this be the landscape that is being created to begin the rebuild? It has its attractions with a virtual overnight sweeping away of a rotten system and a replacement that provides state control and security for its customers.