Michael L

Too Big to Fail: Greenspan Adds His Voice to the Break-Up Chorus

Little late to the party, Al, since it was you and your bubble machine that created those too big to fail. Hush now, be a good boy, dunce cap atop your head and resume your position in the town square. Mumble on about irrational exuberance,then mumble some more about how you really didn't mean it. Don't forget to tell Ben to print some more, just like you taught him..

The FASB Rally: More Dishonest Breathing Room For Banks

Watch when banks start buying assets from each other at "market prices". You buy mine and I'll buy yours. The ol' boy network or hucksters and frauds has new life. FASB? Who runs that and with what oversight? Wasn't mark to market what kept Greenspans internet bubble afloat for so long? When it comes to the American puplic the government's motto seems to be "if you can't beat 'en, cheat 'em."

Blame Citigroup's Woes on the Citi-Travelers Merger

The biggest side of the problem did not come form the Travellers side. It came from no side at all, rather from between the ears of Rubin and Prince.

Citi's Underwhelming Bailout

With more of the suckers money (aka the taxpayer) C is able to raise it's head above water--temporarily. They'll be sputtering and coughing a bit longer, but still be able to suck some oxygen..until the credit card crisis gets rolling. Oh yeah, it's coming alright. Bye bye C.

Citigroup Is Heading into the Single Digits

C in single digits. Yep.

And it may need some additional bailout money when it becomes clear that housing defaults are just the start of our troubles. Remember all those vacations and flat-screens consumers put on their credit cards? Well, it's time for them to pay up...with money they don't have. C's business model was to offer plastic to every guy living under a bridge...well, it's time for C to pay up for its folly.

Fed Violates Rules to Contain the Damage

Oh, how I hope someone will file suit to stop these idiots from burning my money in loans that, if we are lucky, will return 25 cents on the dollar.

Yikes, But Duh: Housing Bottom Could Be Two Years Off

What we need to get housing going again is the return of the Bubble Man. Alan Greenspan was able to flood the economy with good, growing-cheaper dollars with absolutely no negative effects on the economy. Yeah, Alan, make it possible once again for us to have everything our hearts desire just by swiping a piece of plastic. Even great big houses, and more than one too!!

Is Citi's Vikram Pandit a Robot?

I'm not sure the hostility towards Felix is warranted in this instance.

If anyone has read my previous comments they know I am a fan of Pandit, or at least not a a basher. Having not read the entire OP ED I don't know how cogent an argument Pandit makes in the whole. What I do know is the two paragraphs exhibited here are intellectually sounding but vacuous. Empty. Say nothing but the obvious.


It seems to me that Pandit used lots of big words to say he wanted regulations that worked. Well who dosen''t? Someone tell me what Pandit said beyond that that indicated what he thought should be implemented to make those regulations work? And where was his and others voices when lenders were raking in the cash by making loans that had next to zero chance of being repaid. No one gave a damm about regulation when the cash-cow was sick and dieing. They only developed a thoughtful concern when she stopped giving milk. It is all well and good to say you should have treated Elsie with abit more respect and concern after she's died, but how much insight does that take?

Is Citi's Vikram Pandit a Robot?

I have to agree with you. Those two paragraphs emit lots of smoke and not much fire. Note to Pandit: the standards you seek "to apply to all participants"...well, how 'bout you suggesting only making loans to borrowers that have a reasonable chance to repay those loans?

Still No Vision at Citigroup

It unfair to characterize Pandit's tactics as ill-advised. Of course it a tactic. What else is he to do? You know the old saying: When your ass deep in alligators, it is hard to remember that the reason you came in the first place was to drain the swamp. Pandit inherited a mess from a pretend-banker who thought it was so much fun playing idiot with other people's money (read as Chuckie Prince). Plus Pandit had deal with as incompetent and detached BOD as you likely see. Chairman and political hack, Robert Rubin, used these sage words when Prince "retired": " I am in complete agreement and have complete confidence in the direction Chuck has taken the bank." This was the management he inherited. A chairman, and the BOD that elected him, that does not even have the good sense to keep from uttering platitudes that make him look the idiot.


Is Pandit a good CEO? The right man for the job? I don't know. But his job right now, is to stay afloat. He knows, I believe, there is much more potential trouble on the horizon. He may want to do more, but all he can do at the moment is bail water and hope. There are financial storms a plenty on the horizon, enormous storms. He would do well to see to it the C is not some casebook example taught in business schools of how a financial giant slipped beneath the waves.

BTW, I took a bath holding C's stock. My most precipitous losses coming under Pandit's reign. Still, you can't blame the man for this mess. Not yet, anyway.

Long-Term Ugliness

"Oil rose because Big Oil has no competition; they can charge what they want. There's no army of speculators, it's just the big un-American oil companies who set the price." This according to one poster here.

How fortunate for all those price-setting big oil corps that they got every government in the entire world to swear to secrecy about their price fixing. Not one government has spoken up or brought up any charges against the evil American oil companies for collusion. Now that is real power. With power like that, I have a feeling that big oils next move will be to sell us muddy water with claims that it is a super fuel. Shhh. No one say anything.

Absurd Accounting Rules and $5 Trillion Off Bank Balance Sheets

Not to worry. The Fed will find a way to insure this trifling 5 trillion and thereby "save the economy". God forbid we should ever have a cleansing of the financial system if it means recession.

In the meantime, I will dust off the wheelbarrow so that I might carry some dollars to the grocer and get a nice loaf of bread to go with my glass of water.

With More Writedowns and Sold Assets, Citigroup Will Be a Shadow of its Former Self

At the height of the mortgaged mania when all the banks and underwriters were playing at their brinskmanship withn just how risky a loan you could write and bundle, Chuck Prince said that "as long as the music is playing, you have to dance". You HAVE to, no other choice possible,according to Prince.

The BOD, fully complicit, made no attempt to slow or prevent Mr. Prince while he turned a decent institution into a bank with the fiduciary sense of pawnshop. The tone-deaf Mr. Prince didn't realize that the music he was dancing to was a dirge. And the BOD? Well, as the chairman, Robert Rubin said when Prince "retired"--Mr. Rubins words-"I have complete confidence in the direction Chuck Prince has taken the bank." It looks like the chairman and the CEO were trying to out-stupid each other, and the short sellers won.

The Fed Disappoints - As Does Citi

Remember when Merck was in deep trouble with the Vioxx situation sucking all the air out of what good could be thought about the company? And then what all the pundits said was the a terrible appointment to CEO: Richard Clark. Clark was considered a plodding bureaucrat with no research or clinical experience whose only experience was in managing the manufacturing side of Merck's operations. Terrible appointment, the know-it-alls said, and if truth be known, I agreed.

Surprise, surprise. That plodding nuts-and-bolts guy steadied a listing ship and took the stock from the mid-twentys to where it is today at 60 dollars a share. What's more the pipeline is looking real good, real good, which according to the same know-it-alls was dead and would remain dead till the second coming.

Though I think the bod at C are about a half-cut above a collection of fools, I still say give Pandit a chance. Chuck Prince and some glitz and supposed savvy, having studied under Sandy Weill. While most of the money center banks boomed during that time, if you were a C shareholder under Prince's rein you were better off keeping your money under the mattress.

Forget the preconceptions and give the man a chance. Could he be worse the Prince? Let me answer my own question. No.