So do it. We need revenge.

"In a moment," op-ed columnist Nicolas Kristof writes, "we’ll come to a two-step solution to the banking mess."

First, tar and feather America’s 100 leading bankers; and, second, take over insolvent banks and distribute shares to members of the public (without ever using the term “nat...” — oh, never mind).

But first, let’s look at the problem. President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner stumbled badly in introducing the bank bailout. But the larger conundrum is that a bailout is both: A) urgent and essential; and B) unfair and unpopular.

Okay, says Kristof, we probably can't get away with justice, i.e., tarring and feathering.  But we should be focusing on executive compensation.  That half-million salary cap is useless.  There are too many ways of getting around it.  And the American people aren't just hurting, we're angry.  I don't think Obama allows himself to get angry, not to the point of revenge.   In fact that's one of his greatest qualities.  But we're hurting more, its our money, and revenge sounds really good.

So what's to be done?  Well, there's Claire McCaskill's excellent suggestion.

... Cap compensation for all employees at companies receiving bailouts at the salary of the American president, which is $400,000 a year.

Then plug up those tax loopholes we hear so much about.  Not $400,000 + whatever else you could scam, but four-hundred-thousand-bucks-period.  The Institute for Policy Studies figures America would be richer by $20 billion.

And finally nationalize the banks.  

Stop screaming.  Think for a minute.  Nationalize them and hand the shares to all of us.  Our  money bailed them out, after all.  We're talking payback.

For many Americans, it would be the first time they directly owned stock — and, finally, something good could come from the banking Bust Bowl of 2009.

After all, they do it in Alaska.  Suppose we got the same kind of checks Alaskans get every year from their oil?  How about we get profits from the loans we make all the time to banks when we give them our money, whether from our pay checks or -- in this case -- from our taxes? And we don't have to hold onto ownership of the banks.  Once they're sufficiently chastened and back on their feet, we sell them back.

I like it.  But then I'm not a scaredy-cat like people over on the right are.  Words don't frighten me.  Nationalization has a lot of syllables, perhaps more than many conservatives can handle.  But Republicans have demonstrated they can handle m0-ney-in-my-poc-ket okay.  It's got the same number of syllables.  Most of all it's reassuring and it's fair.  That's what we're talking about here.