Citigroup—the fucking financial monstrosity that simply decided a cornerstone of American financial regulation shouldn’t exist, and acted accordingly—is trading below one dollar a share today:
Citigroup Inc., once the world’s biggest bank by market value, dropped below $1 in New York trading for the first time as investors lose confidence the shares can recover after more than $37.5 billion in losses and a government rescue.
Citigroup fell to $1.03 at 12:32 p.m. on the New York Stock Exchange after reaching 97 cents earlier today, marking an 85 percent decline this year and giving the New York-based company a market value of $5.5 billion. At its peak in late 2006, Citigroup stock was worth $55.70, for a market value of $277.2 billion.
Why aren’t we nationalizing the banks already?
… the value of the government’s investment [in Citigroup] fell by more than half. The government said it would convert as much as $25 billion of its preferred stock to common shares for a 36 percent stake in the bank. At yesterday’s closing price of $1.50, that investment is worth about $11.5 billion. Citigroup has a stock market value of $8.2 billion today.
‘Ripped Off’
“Taxpayers are being ripped off,” Congressman Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, said in a statement. “The only thing worse than nationalizing a bank is to pay for the entire bank and only get one-third of it.”
Fact.
Stick a fork in ’em. They’re done.
Ford is a better investment. They actually make things.
Citigroup … doesn’t.
At the risk of combing two old sayings, I’d buy that for a dollar! NOT!!
Isn’t this one of the banks that the US bailing out? Is it the case that Citibank/group is not going to go out of business?
…trying to figure out which of these cheap ass stocks might be a good investment…
They should swap me 5Gs of stock for the 5Gs debt I have with ’em.
THANKS OBAMA!!!
@5 – That should be a investment practice for the banking industry. If you have x value of stocks with them and x amount of debt, being that ValueOfStocks(x) == debt(x), then you should be able to give your stocks back to the company to eliminate your debt to them.
@6: Are you paid to spam the same RNC talking points, like Rick Santelli?
I certainly hope so.
@6 it’s not Obama’s fault. if McCain had won, you’d be seeing him kissing these CEOs’ asses while Congress is bitching at him and wanting to pass tighter restrictions. At the same time, we’d be begging Asia and Europe to not be pulling out their investments in the US if McCain was the president. McCain would be writing executive orders for more tax cuts while people are losing their jobs and their homes at a faster rate than what we have now.
@6
Don’t you mean THANKS BUSH!!
Once nationalization of the banks begins, it has to be sweeping and it has to be fast. O’President has only been in office 6 weeks and 2 days, his staff have had less time than that on the job. That’s why we’re not nationalizing these banks yet.
The FDIC has to staff up to levels that will allow the government to nationalize all the troubled banks AT THE SAME TIME. This is thousands of people who will need to be hired and trained, so that takes some time.
Fortunately, there are plenty of people looking for jobs, not all of them from the financial industry, so maybe there’s a hope for impartial people doing the nationalization.
Right now, the plan seems to be to put banks through those “stress tests.” That should (1) buy us some time to staff up and train enough baby bankers; (2) give some idea of what banks truly need to be nationalized.
I think no later than June 1, but would not be surprised to see it happen closer to the beginning of May.
@10 – And thanks, Clinton. Banking deregulation happened on his watch too.
KB: Thanks for the insightful comment.
@10 – Well Clinton’s openly admitted to not regulating the banks because the economy was flourishing then. (For those at least 28 years old, remember how easy it was to get a great job then and save money?) We have yet to hear Bush or his admin to do the same as well. Bush and his administration saw the signs coming and ignored them, while the SEC ignored the warnings and inquiries regarding Madoff.
Let’s be honest, Bush enjoyed the stable economy that Clinton built and left him then ruined it. Now Bush’s handed the economy, which is in pieces to Obama and Obama’s already starting to glue the pieces back together. The best saying from my childhood in the South to use as an example against Bush is “When you’re taking care of something for someone, try to leave it either in the same shape if not in better shape than when you arrived there.” Clinton cleaned up the economy after Bush 1 and Reagan, where as Bush 2 pissed on the economy and the Constitution. Obama’s now left cleaning up the mess.
I also forgot to say that Clinton’s accepted the blame and apologized as well.
8
No.
Just a patriot who loves his country.
9
Yeah.
Thank goodness Obama is President.
Cause the market is only down 32% since he got elected.
We are blessed, indeed.
Just checked the market, closed below 6600.
You girls may not realize it but the economy is in freefall.
Obama = Hoover
NPR’s Planet Money has been interviewing conservative gov’t finance guys who say the gov’t doesn’t have the manpower to run this many banks.
It’s incredible that Obama’s been on the job six weeks and he’s already being blamed for the economic collapse that occurred last year when Caligutard and his demon minions were in power.
How stupid/crazy/cognitive deficient do conservatives have to be these days?
@6, 16, 17, 18:
You know, I was prepared to believe you weren’t getting paid for this until you used the phrase, “[j]ust a patriot who loves his country.”
Aww shucks. I suppose it gets boring on the East Kent hill. And, a job is a job, even if it is sucking Koch.
Does it bother you this is the exact sort of tactic used by the propagandists of the former Soviet Union?
See, if the PI goes under we’ll get all their neocon libertarian nutjobs posting on SLOG.
I warned you.
I just have a hard time feeling anything but contempt. Could you imagine a giant earthquake now or the sudden spread of an unstoppable disease that kills millions. Where would that leave us? Corporate rats and their right wing ponzi schemes!
Why aren’t we nationalizing the banks already?
Because the government doesn’t know how to fix them either.
A more reasonable and sound scenerio would be dismantling Citibank and selling its various books of business. I do believe it is too big to swallow whole, however it would be digestable in parts, and it wouldn’t necessarily require a nationaization scheme.
Nationalization wouldn’t be particularly difficult. It closed with a market cap of $5.5 billion. If we put a tender offer out at a price of $1.25 per share, we could outright own it for less than $10 billion.
The problem is that Obama’s top economic advisors are basically banking lobbyists who are putting Citi’s executives’ needs before the taxpayers.
Breaking up Citi and selling off the profitable parts will happen eventually, and my guess is that first quarter 09 losses will be so astronomical that amateur hour will be effectively over.
/off topic/
@ Jonathan Golob,
Yes, please ask the SLOG gods for registered commenting. It’s time to begin commenter/troll executions post-haste.
@28 for the totally obvious HELLO SLOG GODS win.
Hey, I’m Mr. Obvious, not you, WiS!
It should be legal to hunt bank executives for sport (and for food).
“……are putting Citi’s executives’ needs before the taxpayers.”
OA, I think the real issue is not with the exec’s needs but how to deal with Citibanks’ bondholders and counterparty issues. Nationalization is certainly an option, however I don’t think it is one the governemnt is eager to undertake. As KB pointed out in 11 above, the federal government has neither the skill set nor qualified people to run an operation of Citibank’s size and complexities.
@ 32,
I disagree, and I’m not asking for the gummit to run Citi–they need to unwind their business and shut them down. The shareholders have already been wiped out, and the bondholders will have to take the so-called “haircut.” That’s the risk of capitalism, right? The FDIC does this everyday on a smaller scale.
I’m just thinking off the top of my head here, but since Citi is so geograhically large, their assets could be sold off to healthy banks by state. Somewhat similar to a state guaranty’s assumption and redistribution of the assets of an insolvent insurance company, but on a national scale.
@21: “McCain points.”
how do I purchase stock?
Want to get my feet wet, I’m not expecting a real return, just want to purchase a share since they’re so low but can’t find out how or where to do it online