“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.”
“Citigroup management gets a great deal; you and I not so much.”
“The Washington Post, which is obsessed with cutting the pay of autoworkers earning $57,000 a year, did not even bother to tell readers what pay cuts Robert Rubin and other top executives at Citibank will receive as a result of conditions in its latest government bailout.”
To the best of my recollection, the Sherman Antitrust law could have prevented this and others like it, if our government had the will to use it.
When banks/corporations are allowed to buy up their competitors, they become so large that any hint of collapse affects the entire economy, even globally.
Bad transactions would normally be borne by many individual banks/corporations without a global effect.
However, what can we expect when corporations/banks finance politicians in return for favortisim?
Press release and terms for the Citigroup deal.
I did not see anything in the terms that would force citigroup to renegotiate home loans, or give the US government any sort of governance of the institution.
Page 1 of the terms a with a $7 bn preferred stock figure on page 1 seems to contradict the $20 preferred stock figure on page 3.