I mean owning one of the world's largest banks.
From today the government on behalf of the taxpayers - that's you and me - own nearly 60% of Royal Bank of Scotland, 57.9% to be precise.
It is no great surprise that the existing shareholders d
id not take up the offer of the cash call as the share price was below the 65.5p offer price announced in October.
A no-brainer then, though it would be fascinating to know who were the 0.24% of shareholders who did buy at that price. Perhaps some of the directors and staff, though surely not that amount of shares between them?
Perhaps some of the institutional shareholders though why they would do so is something of a puzzle. Strange.
All should be revealed, though these things tend to be kept under wraps as there is no obligation for them to be published.
Overall though, what might the consequences of the nationalisation?
First, it will not mean that you and I can ring up RBS and demand cheaper loans or that they reduce their over-draft charges.
Nor will we be able to turn up at the front door of RBS's magnificent offices in Gogarburn, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, to ask if we can use the golf course or the squash courts.
Sadly, it won't work like that.
What is worrying is that it is not exactly clear how it will work.
Our interest in RBS - and the other banks which the taxpayer ends up having an interest in - will be managed by something called 'UK Financial Investments Limited' (UKFI).
It will, according to the Treasury, be an "arm's-length company" but it is is wholly owned by the government.
Its over-arching objectives, the Treasury says, will be "to protect and create value for the taxpayer as shareholder, with due regard to financial stability and acting in a way that promotes competition".
However, what the Treasury does not do is fully explain how this will work in practice, or what the company will do to achieve those objectives.
There could, for example, be a conflict between creating value for the taxpayer as a shareholder and stabilising the bank and the third objective of promoting competition.
It would be in the interest of the taxpayer as a shareholder to decrease competition, thereby increasing the profits.
That would, in turn, help generate a better return for the major stakeholder in the bank, the government - and us as taxpayers.
Sir Philip Hampton, the chairman of Sainsbury's who is a former group finance director at Lloyds, therefore has a difficult job as the chairman of UKFI.
And the idea that UKFI will be "arms-length" of government appears somewhat at odds with the Treasury's further definition of what it will do.
It has to "work to ensure management incentives for banks in which it has shareholdings are based on maximising long-term value and restricting the potential for rewarding failure".
That sounds very much like curbing the pay of senior executives to me.
However, there is also no definition of what constitutes "long-term value".
And it "will also oversee the conditions of the recapitalisation fund, including maintaining, over the next three years, the availability and active marketing of competitively-priced lending to home owners and small businesses at 2007 levels".
Again that is pretty hands of stuff, which the banks are surely unhappy at having to go along with.
Stephen Hester, the new chief executive of RBS, says today that he is grateful for the government for its support.
What he and the executives of the other banks which will have a substantial government holding in them will not be grateful for is anything that smacks of minister-influenced micro-management.
I see trouble ahead.
Peter MacMahon is The Scotsman's Business Editor. Click here to read more of his blogsThe full article contains 659 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
