If you’re like me, you’ve long lamented the fact that, goshdarnit, the US does not own enough of Citi.  But I have good news.  Your prayers have been answered!

Way back when Citi was getting bailout money to the tune of $45, the government got for its trouble preferred shares that it could convert to common stock any old time it wanted to.  Of course, it would never do such a thing, because it would severely dilute existing common stock, wiping out billions in wealth.  Except now it is mulling doing just such a thing, especially since the bank’s stock has dipped below the $2 mark (after $55 less than two years ago) and it’s not like you can dilute anything meaningfully beyond that.  What, now my $2 stock is now worth $1?  Yeah, I’m already out on the ledge, it’s not like this is going to make my day that much worse.

But for those of you living in eternal fear of the other dreaded n-word, this might not constitute nationalization:

There’s no universal agreement on what constitutes nationalization of a bank. In the U.K., the government already owns 43% of Lloyds Banking Group PLC, and last week moved to increase its ownership of Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC to 70% from 58%. Those two banks have been classified as “public-sector entities,” and as much as £1.5 trillion ($2.136 trillion) of their liabilities have been moved over to the country’s balance sheet.

So see, Citi would remain as independent as RBS.  That’s something, right?

Talks of not-nationalization lead, of course, directly to questions about what’s to become of everyone’s favorite dwarf CEO (seriously, does anyone know how tall he is?) because one would expect that if you drive your company into the arms of a gruff-but-caring federal government, you’ve pretty well failed as a corporate leader.  I mean, this is really a lot like if you married a successful pop singer and helped her down a path of self-destruction so inescapable it culminates with her shaving her head and having to have her father take over her affairs, except at this point one wonders if K-Fed could have done much worse.  Bandit was threatened with his job if the company had to come back for more money, and would have been gone last November if there were anyone out there qualified who wanted the job, which is something like what Citi itself ran into when replacing Chuck Prince and someone at the board meeting, possibly drunk, slurred aloud, “Hey, what about that guy from that hedge fund that we bought a few months ago that’s been losing money like nobody’s business?”

Maybe this year’s American Idol runner-up will be offered the job.