Interesting comments from Rahm Emanuel on a Sunday morning talk show.

From Reuters:

The Obama administration thinks it can avoid nationalizing U.S. banks that are currently under scrutiny to see how well they would fare if the recession were worse than expected, the White House said on Sunday.

“I think we will be able to avoid that,” White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” He added that bank nationalization was “not the goal” of the administration.

Emanuel, however, cautioned he had not seen the results of “stress tests” on 19 lenders whose balance sheets are being scrutinized by regulators. They include Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co.and Bank of America.

They really, really don’t want to go down the receivership/nationalization road with any of the big banks. It would be fascinating to know the political calculations behind their reticence.