Fail

Remember yesterday, when I wrote about the contemptible tax-giveaway that Obama's Treasury department engineered for Citi?

Basically, it involved allowing Citi to carry forward losses after a change in ownership when Obama's Treasury department sells out the US stake.

Well, not so fast. It turns out that, not withstanding all manner of subsidies and payoffs to Bob Rubin's old firm, people still think that the company is crap, and are not willing to pay much for the stock, so in order to Treasury Secretary Tim "Eddie Haskell" Geithner to sell the US government's stock now, they would have to take a big loss, which would clearly demonstrate that Timmeh grossly overpaid for the stock when they swapped preferred shares for common stock a few months ago:

Two days after Mr. Pandit trumpeted news that Citigroup would start untangling itself from the federal government, his bank stumbled — this time, on Wall Street. Badly misreading the financial markets, the company struggled on Wednesday to raise the money it needed to repay its bailout funds.

While Citigroup managed to raise $20.5 billion in the stock market and will forge ahead with the repayment, the sale went so poorly that anxious Treasury officials reversed course and delayed their plans to start unwinding the government’s stake in the company immediately, according to people briefed on the matter.

……………

After the close of trading in New York, Citigroup priced its new shares at $3.15 each, below the $3.25 price at which the government assumed its one-third stake in the company. Before the sale, the share price of Citigroup fell 11 cents to $3.45, as investors braced for the new stock.

Rather than suffer a loss for taxpayers, the Treasury Department will now hold on to the $5 billion stake it planned to sell alongside Citigroup’s own $17 billion stock offering. After an initial 90-day delay, the government will try to sell its entire stake — about 7.7 billion shares — over the next six to 12 months.

What this means is that anyone with a pulse………Well, anyone with a pulse whose tongue is not so far up Wall Street's ass that they taste tonsils (see Geithner, Timothy and Obama, Barack), realizes that Citi is a mess and they won't pay what the government paid for it.