The Hill has a piece today arguing that Obama might have a harder time pushing bank nationalization than a Republican since he’d be more vulnerable to charges that he’s a dangerous left-wing freak like Alan Greenspan, Joe Stiglitz, Lindsey

Graham and others who support the idea. As a political matter that may or may not be true. But what caught my eye was the quote from Scott Talbott, vice president and spokesperson for the Financial Services Roundtable, which represents most of the big TARP recipients in addition to a medium sized list of big financial institutions nationwide.

Says Talbott: “If you had government running the banks, in the long run, you’d destroy the private sector.”

The only problem is that no one is talking about a ‘long run’. No one who is remotely part of the mainstream policy discussion is talking about the government taking over and running the banking sector. The idea under discussion is having the government take over the failed banks, clean them up and then reprivatize them. Private banks in, private banks out. The only difference is that the private banks that come out on the other side would be owned by different people. That’s the rub.

So this is a complete non-point.

As we mentioned below, Rep. Pete Sessions and his congressional office are still saying that Sessions has never met billionaire fraudster Sir Allen Stanford — notwithstanding the fact that Zack Roth has come up with a picture of the two of them chilling down in Antigua a few years ago.

But it seems that there’s no shortage of pictures of these two pals spending time together. TPM Reader ES just sent us a link to this new picture on an Antiguan government website.

It seems there’s no shortage of pictures for the Sessions/Stanford photo album, so definitely send us your snapshots of Sessions and Stanford and we’ll share them with readers too.

There’s been a lot of speculation about whether Bernie Madoff’s operation started legit and then drifted into a Ponzi scheme over time to cover up losses.

But the trustee told Madoff victims this morning: “We have no evidence to indicate securities were purchased for customer accounts.”

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) says he doesn’t know accused billionaire fraudster Allen Stanford; photos say otherwise.