{"id":5804,"date":"2008-11-24T19:50:18","date_gmt":"2008-11-25T02:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=5804"},"modified":"2008-11-25T05:57:48","modified_gmt":"2008-11-25T12:57:48","slug":"citis-so-nice-i-bought-it-twice-a-tin-foil-hat-production","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/5804\/citis-so-nice-i-bought-it-twice-a-tin-foil-hat-production\/","title":{"rendered":"Citi&#8217;s So Nice I Bought It Twice (a Tin Foil Hat production)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alright, let&#8217;s see if I got this straight:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Less than 4 weeks ago Citi was purchasing Wachovia in a deal brokered by the FDIC.<\/li>\n<li>Less than 3 weeks ago the Fed injected $25 billion into Citi<\/li>\n<li>Less than 1 week ago Citi&#8217;s shares tumbled<\/li>\n<li>Yesterday the Fed injected ANOTHER $20 billion into Citi<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Am I forgetting anything?\u00a0 Oh yeah:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Based on share price, Citi is now worth $20 billion&#8230; which means we (the taxpayers) have <strong>bought her twice!<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When Citi was buying Wachovia waaaaaaay back in October, it was apparently strong enough to handle the $42 billion in losses it agreed to take on in exchange for the Fed covering the other $270 billion that Wachovia was going to generate in bad loans.\u00a0 But now we discover that they actually needed us to purchase them&#8230; TWICE, and we&#8217;re still unsure if they&#8217;ll survive.<\/p>\n<p><em>(For a clearer picture of which lenders had these bad loans and would fail, read <a title=\"The Mortgage Dance\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=3355\" target=\"_blank\">The Mortgage Dance<\/a> from July of 2008 and click on the &#8220;accounting debacle&#8221; link which was originally delivered in a speech in August of 2007!\u00a0 Or you can read about <a title=\"Countrywide is Losing Its Car Keys\" href=\"http:\/\/lifethatpops.com\/2007\/05\/16\/if\/\" target=\"_blank\">Countrywide beginning its fall<\/a> back in May of 2007.\u00a0 My point is that much of this seems obvious now and was actually visible on the horizon quite a while ago.\u00a0 But the Fed keeps up its <a title=\"Countrywide, Wall Street and Animal House\" href=\"http:\/\/lifethatpops.com\/2008\/01\/29\/countrywide-does-it-again\/\" target=\"_blank\">Animal House impression<\/a>, telling us to &#8220;remain calm&#8230; all is well.&#8221;\u00a0 The possibility of a conspiracy grows so large that now i don&#8217;t even leave the house without my <a title=\"Tin Foil Hats Optional\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=5435\" target=\"_blank\">Tin Foil Hat<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I have to wonder if there was more going on in that initial Wachovia deal.\u00a0 Was Citi getting a cash infusion of some type?\u00a0 One of the influential directors at Citi is Robert Rubin &#8211; the former secretary of the Treasury.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not sure I understand how he didn&#8217;t see that Citi was only three weeks away from failing.\u00a0 Although I can certainly understand how he might have an inside ear at the Treasury.\u00a0 Was the Wachovia deal a way to support Citi without making a public scene?\u00a0 That would explain the ensuing public scene (the technical term in economics is <em>hissy-fit<\/em>) that Citi <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/5804\/citis-so-nice-i-bought-it-twice-a-tin-foil-hat-production\/#more-5804\" class=\"more-link\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alright, let&#8217;s see if I got this straight: Less than 4 weeks ago Citi was purchasing Wachovia in a deal brokered by the FDIC. Less than 3 weeks ago the Fed injected $25 billion into Citi Less than 1 week ago Citi&#8217;s shares tumbled Yesterday the Fed injected ANOTHER $20 billion into Citi Am I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-real-estate","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4721,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/4721\/wachovia-fails-did-you-notice\/","url_meta":{"origin":5804,"position":0},"title":"Wachovia Fails&#8230; Did You Notice?","author":"Sean Purcell","date":"September 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Lost in the tsunami of bail-out failure, Wachovia gave up the ghost.\u00a0 Wachovia now joins Countrywide and WaMu as the big three option arm originators now become three of the biggest financial failures of all time.\u00a0 If this looks familiar to any posts you may have read here at BHB,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Lending&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Lending","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/lending\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3355,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3355\/the-mortgage-dance-ez-just-follow-the-bouncing-ball\/","url_meta":{"origin":5804,"position":1},"title":"The Mortgage Dance? EZ: Just Follow The Bouncing Ball.","author":"Sean Purcell","date":"July 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"And the beat goes on...\u00a0 but sometimes it helps\u00a0to have that little bouncing ball show us\u00a0exactly what lyric we are singing this week.\u00a0 All together now: Today the Fed suprised no one by\u00a0opening the discount window to ailing siblings: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.\u00a0 Together they\u00a0hold more\u00a0than half of all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Real Estate&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Real Estate","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/real-estate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4669,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/4669\/the-mortgage-dance-continues\/","url_meta":{"origin":5804,"position":2},"title":"The Mortgage Dance Continues","author":"Sean Purcell","date":"September 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I posted the following back in July and with WaMu going down it seems like a good time to bring it back to the top.\u00a0 If there is any confusion as to who is going down and why, make a point of clicking the link on the \"accounting debacle\".\u00a0 It\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Lending&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Lending","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/lending\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3201,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3201\/and-wachovia-completes-the-gang-of-three\/","url_meta":{"origin":5804,"position":3},"title":"And Wachovia Completes the Gang of Three","author":"Sean Purcell","date":"June 3, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Wachovia board members have forced CEO Ken Thompson to retire\u00a0\u00a0and\u00a0Realtors should be popping champagne corks all over the nation.\u00a0\u00a0Why?\u00a0\u00a0Because Wachovia is the final reckoning of the Gang of Three\u00a0and this may very well signal the bottom of the market.\u00a0 Disclaimer #1: I usually write posts and comments backed by statistics.\u00a0\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Lending&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Lending","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/lending\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3497,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3497\/mortgage-market-week-in-review-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":5804,"position":4},"title":"Mortgage Market Week in Review","author":"Tom Vanderwell","date":"July 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, here we are on Friday again and I\u2019m trying to figure out how to summarize all that\u2019s been happening in the mortgage and financial worlds.\u00a0\u00a0 I could write a book about it, but I won\u2019t (at least not today\u2026.) So, here goes: The week started out with Wachovia (the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Lending&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Lending","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/lending\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5161,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/5161\/mortgage-market-week-in-review-13\/","url_meta":{"origin":5804,"position":5},"title":"Mortgage Market Week in Review","author":"Tom Vanderwell","date":"October 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Here we are on Friday again.\u00a0 That means that it\u2019s time to try to summarize what\u2019s going on in the mortgage and finance world.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m going to talk about a couple of main things:\u00a0 the economic fundamentals, some earnings reports\u00a0and the \u201cmargin calls\u201d that are going on in the equity\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Lending&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Lending","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/lending\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5804"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5820,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5804\/revisions\/5820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}