Citi Save
Congratulations. As a taxpayer, you now own a chunk of Citigroup, whether you like it or not.
Plenty of reactions over at Economist’s View – hat tip to Calculated Risk, who quotes Paul Krugman:
A bailout was necessary — but this bailout is an outrage: a lousy deal for the taxpayers, no accountability for management, and just to make things perfect, quite possibly inadequate, so that Citi will be back for more.
1 Comment »
RSS feed for comments on this post. Trackback URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Well, I suppose the good news is that they got the stock when it was at 3 bucks, and not 30. But that’s stretching for some good news.
I was reading an article about the CEOs of the car makers again–it was in defense of them taking their company planes to beg for money. The article mentioned that these guys need privacy to work deals while flying and have to be available for company business at any moment–as if every other CEO in the country–large or small–doesn’t work on regular planes every time they fly. I don’t know how much the “journalist” was paid to print that viewpoint, but it underlines part of the problem: arrogance and no real effort to distinguish between “want” and “need.” It’s highly convenient to spent 20k to fly privately, but it isn’t a necessity. Any CEO that doesn’t know the difference needs to go back to business school. Any CEO that has a company in dire straits sure as hell shouldn’t be wasting resources on such a convenience either. It’s very disrespectful.
As for a lot of the other companies in trouble–same problem. Arrogance and wishful thinking.
Comment by Maria — 11/24/2008 @ 9:03 am