The Citi's Never Cheap
Lots to say about the extraordinary taxpayer bailout of Citigroup, plus some comments on Tim Geithner, but no time during the next day or so. Back soon...
posted by The Cunning Realist at Monday, November 24, 2008
16 Comments:
So we give billions upon billions to those guys, and then THIS happens:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/23/AR2008112301143.html
Strange days, indeed
Everyday a new billion dollar bailout, or a whisper of one, to a financial institution that created or fueled the problem, and have been rewarding themselves for years and years with hundreds of millions. I don't think our representatives are mad enough. This is absolute insanity.
Can anyone believe "American Express" is in line for handouts! Aren't they suppose to be the card for the ultra-rich, the luxury card, and now they are begging for money from Joe the Plumber, Alice the Waitress, Sandy the Teacher, Frank the driver...
I think Hell just froze over, Wall Street supplied the ice, and Paulson, Bernanke, Cox, and this WH Admin setup their fishing shanty out in the middle. They have a bucket of money. They closed the blinds. And now are throwing it into the hole, and the stream is taking it away, never to be seen again.
Our local municipality always sends out the property tax bills during the holidays (Merry Christmas pay us thousands now or get out). This is going to be an especially painful one. Do you think we all should become a bank holding company like American Express and others ;-|
It's disgraceful that companies are becoming a bank holding company, or buying a small s&l, so they qualify for the funds. But you know how someone on WS will say, we had to do it it too, to compete (Main street would call that a race to the bottom, or over the cliff.). Well, maybe the same goes here. Everyone has to start doing it, because if one company gets billions for making poor business decisions it hurts those that made good business decisions. But it doesn't matter, now they too need to take money to compete with the other company's bailout.
At least the auto industry came as an industry, the financial institutions come one at a time and say help me.
$700 Billion. Almost $2 Billion per American citizen. Don't give it to me, though, because then my rent would have to raise to $200 million a month. But the guys we are entrusting it to are doing any better than I would do? I say, let's raise the rent!
And by rent...I intended to mean Wall street. Not my own. They can have their multi-billion dollar "loans". I would simply like to be paid like I went to college, and graduated. Well, I guess one more year on Direct Loan hardship deferment can't kill me.
we should just give $5,000 to every taxpayer as a stimulous
but not more than you paid in taxes
nothing to those who paid nothing in other words
then, close the stock market until Mid January
and when it re-opens, find out who susvived the Xmas rush/stimulous and who perished
the weaker ones can go, like Citi, GM and Chrysler and we save a ton
my plan would cost 150 billion, about half the bailout of Robert Rubin's Citi
then we can all afford this T shirt
http://pigraphics.com/shirt_00020_questionothority_bl_mensTee.htm
BTW, Citibank is graciously giving it's customers thank you gifts for bailing their asses out...they're rate jacking and decreasing existing credit lines, even on what would be considered low risk account holders.
NY Crank talks about Citibanks new notices sent to cardholders regarding their new usurious policy - 29%. I guess the timing was kind of ironic.
You don't hear much about those car and payday loan shops. These have to be killing consumers in the real economy, or is this more like the black or underground economy. You look at some city streets and there are several on the same block or within the same block. Makes you wonder if the mob just got legit.
For awhile, I've held that after the Bush economy our only growth industries are going to be drugs and prostitution. So why don't we just legalize them now and start setting up co-branded drive thrus at every interstate loop: PawnInTheBox and Citicrank (and pay with the 29% APR Citicrank card).
On a more sincere and less cynical note: Happy Thanksgiving, Realists!
I got a "You're already approved!" letter from Citi yesterday. I shredded it, since I don't approve of them.
Thomas Friednman, "All Fall Down".
Referring to the NYT article, "Citigroup Pays for a Rush to Risk", he expresses his disgust.
"Why? Because in searing detail it exposed — using Citigroup as Exhibit A --- how some of our country’s best-paid bankers were overrated dopes who had no idea what they were selling, or greedy cynics who did know and turned a blind eye."
I would like to say in my defense that when I wrote that unbelievably moronic comment I had been undergoing heavy doses of cold medication for a large number of days. I sincerely regret writing it, and wish to retract everything in it. Thank you.
The direct bailouts are expensive and will be debilitating to the Treasury. It is what they have to do in order save the present elites and their system. Everyone is afraid of the unknown.
The devil will have to be paid if they do not stop the deflation of assets soon. Because then the huge guarantees the Fed has given will have to be paid. When that happens they have two choices. Sterelize them by borrowing, or monetizing
In the first case trillions of borrowing in a short period will probably will not be possible and the Treasury market will collapse. If they can by chance borrow it then there will be no free money in the system and the rest of the markets and the real economy will take another leg down. That all assumes the congress approves the spending and borrowing. Not a done deal.
If they monetize then perhaps they can inflate just the damaged paper but in all likelyhood other things would inflate as well. Weimar here we come. Well probably not that bad, but who knows.
ALOHA !!
Eliminate the US Federal Reserve Bank. Why do we need them? A trained chimpanzee can fail even one that teaches at Princeton!
CHANGE THAT ... Obama!!!
C.R., Know anything about Aish Hatorah? Some heavyweight Wall Streeters from Goldman Sachs, Bear Sterns etc have gone through the executive learning program which is about what it means to be a Jew.
A couple of years ago, Aish Hatorah set up the Clarion Fund which, on paper, produced the anti-Muslim film, Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West.
28 million Obsession dvds were distributed in September of this year via Sunday newspapers. More were distributed by a vast network of right wing extremists, Jewish and Christian.
Whoever is behind the Obsession project also appears to be behind the National Republican Trust PAC which paid a few million to air the Reverend Wright Hates America ad on televison.
Sheldon Adelson is getting a lot of credit for financing this operaton but I don't think it was just him. The timing of the decline in Adelson's fortune is noteworthy.
I suspect a lot of the really ugly
anti-Obama crap came from this group and I also suspect there was more to it than just skirting campaign laws.
Iran, maybe?
Now why couldn't Citi have followed:
1. Don't risk a lot for a little
2. Don't risk more than you can afford to lose
3. Consider the odds
Dan Amos, Aflac CEO
Dear CR,
You said you had lots to say about the bailout of Citi but have said nothing thus far. I would love to hear your take on it, as I am really troubled by the double standard the govt is applying to bailouts of our financial versus our industrial sectors, and worry that any true Keynesian stimulus will be hamstrung by the billions the outgoing administration has already spent. What happens when the printing presses stop and we have to sell all this debt? Who will buy?
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