Whether you call it restructuring or nationalization, it's a play on words. The banks will have to be taken over to restore them back to health.

As Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf says, "nationalisation" is just a synonym for restructuring. And when people say nationalisation is not an option, they're in denial. Wolf compares it to President Jimmy Carter's adviser on inflation Alfred Kahn who triggered the president's wrath when he used the word "depression". As a result, he called it a "banana" instead. Not that it stopped the subsequent recession.

"We are painfully learning that the world's mega-banks are too complex to manage, too big to fail and too hard to restructure. Nobody would wish to start from here. But, as worries in the stock market show, banks must be fixed, in an orderly and systematic way. The stress tests should be tougher than now planned. Recapitalisation must then occur. Call it a banana if you want. But bank restructuring itself must begin.".

I look at why nationalisation is inevitable and deplore the games of semantics in my column here.