Monday, November 24, 2008

Citi Bailout 2: Electric Boogaloo


Well, the US Government this morning announced that it would be bailing out Citigroup to the tune of $20Billion in Preferred stock, and, more importantly, guaranteeing some $300 Billion in bad assets. This is in addition to the $25 Billion in preferred stock the US taxpayer bought as part of the first "Big Bailout." This sent the stock market up on strength of a rally in financial stocks, but the reaction of most economists around the blogosphere has been somewhere between "decent idea, bad execution" to "OMG this is cover-your-eyes awful." Mark Thoma has a good round up of informed opinion here. As with a lot of this, I don't know what to think, but I do know who I trust, and the people that I trust seem to think this is a pretty shitty idea.

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