The highly respected (and right so far) economist, Nouriel Roubini (“Dr. Doom”), is now advocating the nationalization of the banks, stabilizing them, and then reselling them back into the private sector.
Read his argument for doing this (in a piece he wrote, with another economist, for the Washington Post) here.
Money quote:
The U.S. banking system is close to being insolvent, and unless we want to become like Japan in the 1990s — or the United States in the 1930s — the only way to save it is to nationalize it.
Prometheus Unbound 