Frank Rich

Nationalization would likely mean wiping out the big banks' managements and shareholders. It's because that reckoning has mostly been avoided so far that those bankers may be the Americans in the greatest denial of all.

From 1961 to 1964, I was fortunate enough to work at a think tank in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago. As a writer and editor, I reported in a publication about the thinkers. Our offices were in a former mansion; I worked in what had been the ballroom. As I sat typing my copy, I imagined the dancers waltzing.