Reminding us once again that they are better than we, the UK enacted its own failout plan.  They’re only putting forth 50b pounds, although that does translate to roughly ninety kajillion thousand dollars, so maybe that’s still a lot.  But!  In exchange, the British government is getting a piece of that sweet, sweet nationalization pie:

The government will offer to buy preference shares to help boost capital at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Barclays Plc and at least six other banks, the Treasury said in a statement today. The plan also guarantees about 250 billion pounds of loans and increases the amount the Bank of England makes available for banks to borrow to at least 200 billion pounds.

There had been a similar push, briefly, in the House’s first take on the failout, but that was quickly forgotten because it made too much sense to give the taxpayers some sort of stake in the companies they were paying for, if they absolutely had to pay for them.

Also, Iceland recently did something similar with two of its banks, Spain cribbed the original failout plan from Paulson, and Germany, Ireland, and Greece have all promised that deposits in their respective companies’ banks are safe.  I do not expect the US to get a Christmas card from anyone this year, because this is of course all our fault.  Sorry, rest of the world.