CNBC’s Mark Haines — who yesterday made waves by suggesting that Wall Street companies can’t “be run well” by those making under $250,000 and compared Wall Street executives to Nazis and Baathists while defending their bonuses — was at it again today.

While debating Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), Haines said those who think bailed-out executives shouldn’t receive bonuses are engaged in “witch-huntery.” He also expressed dismay at the thought of Wall Streeters working for a $100,000 salary:

This is witch-huntery. I’ll be perfectly honest with you. You and people who share your opinion seem to feel that, you know, let’s hold salaries on Wall Street to $100,000. Do you have any idea what Wall Street would look like if you did that?

Watch it:

As Sherman pointed out, it’s not the idea of bonuses and the salaries that’s the problem — it’s that the people receiving the bonuses and salaries are working for federally bailed-out enterprises. These are exceptional circumstances that call for a change in Wall Street’s standard operating procedure.

But this is not a zero-sum game. Here’s an suggestion from Brad DeLong on how to handle compensation for traders and executives, if they stick around and actually nurse the financial system back to health:

Traders and financial executives who are willing to work very hard for what are now government-owned enterprises should be offered the carrot of long-term restricted equity stakes: that if they do their jobs well and if the government makes a healthy return because of their skill, forethought, and diligence, they should make healthy returns as well.

Sounds reasonable.

Yesterday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) successfully completed the sale of IndyMac bank, eight months after it was nationalized following catastrophic losses due to subprime mortgages. The bank’s 33 branches will reopen today as branches of OneWest, a Pasadena-based bank.

Even though it cost more than originally estimated, the successful nationalization and re-privatization of IndyMac — the fourth largest bank ever seized by federal regulators — shows that taking over troubled financial institutions, clearing them of their troubled assets, and selling them back to the private sector can be done. As Stephen Gandel wrote in Time:

For the government, the IndyMac sale provides a shining example of how takeovers can work, at a time when the Obama Administration may soon begin pushing for more nationalizations…The government is in the process of stress-testing the nation’s largest banks as part of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s plan to fix the ailing banking sector. And many think the outcome of those tests could lead to more takeovers.

We’ve been arguing that nationalization is the best way to handle zombie financial institutions. However, in order for leviathans like AIG and Citigroup to be nationalized and wound down, some mechanism — different from that employed by the FDIC — needs to be created. As FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair explained to the Senate Banking committee yesterday:

The problems of supervising large, complex financial institutions are compounded by the absence of procedures and structures to effectively resolve them in an orderly fashion when they end up in severe financial trouble. Unlike the clearly defined and proven statutory powers that exist for resolving insured depository institutions, the current bankruptcy framework available to resolve large complex non-bank financial entities and financial holding companies was not designed to protect the stability of the financial system.

The Obama administration and Congress are reportedly “rushing to write legislation that allows the federal government to take over and unwind the businesses of a large financial institution,” which hopefully means that nationalization is at least on their radar. Thus far, as Paul Krugman noted, the steps taken by the administration make it seem like they think the crisis “can be undone with a bit of financial engineering,” which could be a very flawed assumption.

Plus, nationalization would allow the federal government to prevent bailed-out institutions from, say, paying out huge bonuses or — as Citigroup is currently doing — spending $10 million on new executive offices while lobbying against bonus-restricting legislation.

According to leaked estimates from a Congressional Budget Office report to be released later today, the deficit for 2009 will be $1.8 trillion, falling to $1.4 trillion in 2009. The Obama administration had projected this year’s deficit would reach $1.75 trillion.

Watch MSNBC’s report:

As Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein pointed out, the numbers confirm that “the recession is worse than they thought when they did these things last time,” and thus “the more urgent it is for us to spend more money to stimulate the economy.”