Good Bank, Bad Bank: Citi & Uncle Sam (C)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Citigroup_logoThe speculation has been brewing all week (longer actually, but let’s move on) where Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C) was going.  Many believed an ‘AIG-esque’ package was coming, and many believed a quasi-filing protection was next.  The "run on the bank" fear has gone too deep now to be stopped without any protections, guarantees, and assurances from the government.  That’s why we asked this weekend, "what happens to Citi on Monday morning?"  Then late today came an interesting thought and an interesting scenario.

Now, comes a report out of the WSJ showing that Citi is nearing anagreement with government officials to create a structure to house someof Citi’s risky assets.  Keep in mind that the WSJ noted,"…discussions remains fluid and might not result in an agreement…"and also noted "The bad bank also might absorb assets from Citigroup’soff-balance-sheet entities, which hold $1.23 trillion."

Here is the serious issue at hand: Citi is now in the TOO BIG TO FAILclub, or so we have been told over and over and over.

Uncle Sam ordained it as one of the TARP-mandated survivors.That doesn’t mean Citi stockholders will be allowed to get rich and itdoesn’t mean that the bailout will be top to bottom.

There is also the chance that on Monday morning all of the speculations of this last week won’t carry over too far.

To be continued…..

Jon C. Ogg
November 23, 2008

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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