This issue is referenced more or less obliquely in a few articles out today. But here's something to keep an eye on in those swooning bank stocks that pulled down global markets yesterday. Clearly, the staggering losses these banks reported for the fourth quarter of 2008 have raised renewed questions about their solvency and value. But I think it's more than that. Is the Obama administration considering a second bailout that would clean out the current shareholders? i.e., making the current stocks worthless? I'm a little unclear why that hasn't happened already in several cases, since a lot of these institutions are only in business because of various Fed-support and taxpayer bailouts. But the issue of potential nationalization is clearly figuring into these stock fluctuations as well.