Imagine there was this industry–Industry A–that had been flying high for years. It benefited from major regulatory shifts, and changes in the tax code. Its employees were the highest paid of any industry. Then it landed in a crisis entirely of its own making. It had been manufacturing defective products and selling them around the [...]
There are a lot of parallels between the deal unveiled overnight to restore confidence in Citigroup and the terms of the FDIC-arranged merger with Wachovia from September that never went through. A big pool of assets (now $306 billion, then $312 billion) is set aside, Citi agrees to take the hit on the first few [...]
