Welfare Queens Gone Wild Update: Looks like this Welfare Queen won't be getting that private jet....

[marmar]

from the Financial Times:



Treasury forces Citi to cancel jet order
By Krishna Guha in Washington and Francesco Guerrera in New York

Published: January 27 2009 19:32 | Last updated: January 28 2009 00:37


The US financial sector’s new political masters began exerting their influence on Tuesday as Citigroup was forced to scrap the purchase of a $50m executive jet that was seen as a misuse of money at a time when the bank is reliant on public support.

Only a day earlier, Citi had insisted it would complete the acquisition of the aircraft. But it backed down after officials acting for Tim Geithner, the new Treasury secretary, expressed strong opposition to the move.

Mr Geithner’s action came as he raced against time to change public perceptions of the government’s bank rescue effort – the troubled asset relief programme inherited from the Bush administration.

The Obama team wants to move forward with a comprehensive bank clean-up and recapitalisation programme. Senior Wall Street executives said yesterday that they had been sounded out on plans for an “aggregator bank” that would purchase toxic assets from banks.

Under one of the plans discussed, toxic assets would be valued by an independent third party. Where assets are purchased at prices below their book values, the government might then inject common equity into the banks to make up for capital wiped out by the sales.

Mr Geithner and his colleagues know that any full-scale overhaul of the financial sector will almost certainly require more funds from Congress. So their immediate priority is to restore confidence in the recapitalisation process, which polls suggest is deeply unpopular. An essential element of this is convincing the public that the money is being used in ways that benefit the wider economy. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e4093646-eca6-11dd-a534-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

[Xipe Totec]

1. I didn't know Bank CEOs were Gay n/t

I guess they're not all bad after all.

[virgogal]

2. These guys,(and I'm sure they're mainly guys),are so out of

touch with reality it boggles the mind.

[skooooo]

3. they don't "get it" nt

[gratuitous]

4. Well, why did we give Citi all that money?

Geez, if their big shots can fly around in their own executive jet, what's the point of being a corporate big shot? We didn't give them all that money for them not to buy a bunch of executive goodies? Well, ain't that a kick in the head?

[Canuckistanian]

5. Were they ever really in financial trouble?

It doesn't seem like they're on the edge of insolvency.

It's time to open the books on Citi.

[Deja Q]

6. I think the author meant to say "$50M" - upper case "M".

Complete "piece" indeed.

I didn't register to read the rest of it.