Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC) have now gone to the public feeding trough for hundreds of billions of dollars in direct capital infusions and guarantees of toxic assets. It is time to STOP dumping money into these capital shredding machines.

Together these two banks have about 10 billion in outstanding shares of common stock.  At their current depressed stock prices of $3.50 and $7.00, these dreary behemoths could be bought for about $50 billion and be made "wards of the state". They could then be added to the bottomless medicaid budget, where the problem will go largely unnoticed. 

OR:

The Beltway Blowhards in Congress could do the following:

After buying the outstanding shares of the two banks, Congress should run them.

Senator Chris Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, the two outspoken financial geniuses in Congress, can be appointed Chairman and CEO of both banks. And Bernie Madoff could be appointed CFO for both banks. All three wizards would  work for $1.00 per year each. Bernie could "cook the books" each quarter and make everyone happy, and Chris and Barney could pontificate at the annual meetings and tell us how each bank is "fundamentally sound".

The toxic assets of both banks can be guaranteed by all the Social Security funds currently on deposit at the U.S. Treasury. If  the Federal Government's Social Security ponzi-like accounting system is applied to these two big banks, we can sweep this crisis under the rug by the end of the first quarter. 

What's another I.O.U. from the Federal Government?

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