John Reed, the financier who helped engineer the creation of Citigroup (NYSE: C) has a message for investors and taxpayers who are none-to-pleased with his track record of value destruction: My bad!
In an interview with Bloomberg, Reed said "I'm sorry. These are people I love and care about. You could imagine emotionally it's not easy to see what's happened."
He also advocated splitting Citigroup and similar banks into smaller parts to lessen their ability to torpedo the broader economy.
"I would compartmentalize the industry for the same reason you compartmentalize ships," he said. "If you have a leak, the leak doesn't spread and sink the whole vessel. So generally speaking you'd have consumer banking separate from trading bonds and equity."
Nice analogy. He must have done well on that part of the SAT. But here's the worst part: If you read between the lines, he actually defended his advocacy of repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, even though he now says that was a mistake. "When you're running a company, you do what you think is right for the stockholders. Right now I'm looking at this as a citizen."
Well at least he's honest about how he bent the political system to his advantage with no regard for the interests of citizens.
And yet Mr. Reed was still able to conduct that interview from his office on Park Avenue. Here's an idea: Give up your office, sell all your stuff, and send every penny you have to the United States government to help compensate us for the Citigroup bailout that became necessary, in part, because of your actions. Then maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to respond to your apology with something other than an eye roll.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-06-2009 @ 1:23PM
magicman said...
Now citi bank is raising interest rates on credit cards to the default rate even if you are in good standing and only use 10% of your available credit. They borrow our money to make them whole and then take more when they can. This is a bad situation for others who have tons of debt. IT is a bad move on the part of Citi as they will loose customers in all aspects of their business.