by Laura Conaway

A pair of headlines today:

Bloomberg: "Dodd Says Short-Term Bank Nationalization Might Be Necessary." And Wall Street Journal: "White House Says Banks Shouldn't Be Nationalized"

The stock market is in a tizz over the mixed signals. Washington Post reports:

Some investors are starting to think that maybe the market won't recover until some big financial institutions have been nationalized, said Nigel Galt, chief U.S. Economist at IHS Global Insight. "Clearly you don't want to be holding those stocks if you think those firms are going to get nationalized and the shareholders are going to get wiped out."