It’s no secret that the spe­cific lan­guage of polling ques­tions affects results, but a thirty point swing?! This actu­ally makes me think that nation­al­iza­tion of select banks is more likely than I’d pre­vi­ously thought. Given all the noise from Bernanke, Gei­th­ner, and Obama him­self, I was fairly con­vinced that they really do oppose nation­al­iza­tion for ide­o­log­i­cal rea­sons. But this poll result makes me think that per­haps it was simple polit­i­cal cow­ardice. If that’s the case, then you can expect to see nation­al­iza­tions take place under the code words “temporary takeovers” and “government-assisted restructuring.” There will also be much talk about how the FDIC does this kind of thing to insol­vent banks all the time. Let’s just hope tax­pay­ers get a better deal on it than we did with AIG.

(h/t Yves Smith)