How Treasury Secretary must be regretting his utterances of last week. No sooner had he finished saying we've stabilized the banks, than the second biggest bank by assets is pressured and has to be bailed out. In return for the cash and guarantees, the government will get $27 billion of preferred shares paying an 8 percent dividend. The Treasury Secretary seems clueless. Citi's woes i think can be traced back to his comments of last week. The markets did not like the idea of putting up the TARP shutters, neither did day like the about face on the purchase of toxic assets. The 60% decline in Citi's stock price was the market venting its displeasure and increasingly that displeasure is aimed at the Treasury secretary.
The Reckoning
Free-Market ChampionArticles in this series are exploring the causes of the financial crisis.
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