Beating a dead horse is sometimes a good idea, especially when the dead horse is the economy, and the good idea is to stop listening to Alan Greenspan.

Greenspan's call for nationalizing banks is no less than a trumpet call for a hasty retreat from the laissez-faire capitalism that he so ardently defended since he was an Ayn Rand acolyte.

But Greenspan's proposed solution smacks of a double-reverse bait-and-switch that would eventually result in a return to excessive greed on Wall Street. His idea sounds like only a temporary takeover until the big banks recover, at which time they would again be given free rein to create another bubble.

How about Simon Johnson's alternative idea of busting up the banking trust?

It would be a rough ride, but it could stabilize U.S. banks (even the littler ones) in the short term while not endangering us in the long term by leaving us in thrall to the banking industry's oligarchs.

Teddy Roosevelt did it 100 years ago when he wrestled to bust the Standard Oil trust. (See the 1906 Puck cartoon above — the snake on the upper right is John D. Rockefeller.)

A 21st century solution — at least a step toward one — might be to unleash the FDIC on individual banks that are failing, Johnson says, instead of unleashing Congress to bail them out so they could continue to collude to rule us.