After universal condemnation and ridicule, the Vikram Pandit-headed Citigroup cancelled the order for its new $50 million corporate jet.
Hooray!
Sorry, Vikram. Not for You
Asked about the luxury jet, President Barack Obama’s spokesman Robert Gibbs said the President “doesn’t believe that is the best use of money at this point.”
Besides President Obama, the U.S. Treasury Department was also not pleased with Citigroup squandering $50 million on a plush corporate jet after the bank received $45 billion in government bailout money and guarantees on hundreds of billions of its troubled assets.
Better luck with your next toy, Vikram.
Obama Says ‘No’ to Vikram’s New Toy added by SearchIndia.com on
View all posts by SearchIndia.com →
If I recall correctly, $50m is quite trifling when you compare it to what Ken Lay and his lackeys were asking from Dynergy when the latter was trying to bail out Enron. They had demanded obscenely fat severance packages after already bleeding Enron dry. This was a few months before the accounting fraud came to light and was one of the reasons Dynergy refused to get involved in it. I can give you the exact figures demanded by Enron once I refer to my copy of “The Smartest Guys in the Room” at home. And I thought here Citi was trying to sell back to Dassault the two jets of $25m that it currently has. Or am I wrong?
Nevertheless, one would expect better discretion from Citi in such times.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
1. You write above: $50m is quite trifling when you compare it to what Ken Lay and his lackeys were asking from Dynergy when the latter was trying to bail out Enron
Do you know how many jobs $50 million can save – a lot. Let’s not forget that Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit has fired 73,000 employees in the last 12 months.
Yes, let them sell the other two Dassault jets too.
And what’s wrong in flying commercial? Bottomline, Vikram Pandit is a remorseless greedy pig.
2. It’s the Obscene Greed of a few individuals that destroys the lives of so many. (Another family committed murder/suicide in Southern California today after both parents lost their jobs.)
Do you need a $35,000 commode for your toilet, $87,000 carpet et al for your office (John Thain, former CEO of of Merrill Lynch) when people all around you are losing their jobs?
3. The tragedy is these days in the world of big business we tend to naively compare one instance of eggregious misconduct with another and exclaim, Oh Citigroup is not as bad as Enron. or ejaculate, $50m is quite trifling when you compare it to what Ken Lay and his lackeys were asking from Dynergy. These odious comparisons make no sense and are distinctions without any difference.
After rereading my post I realized that I had butchered what I was trying to say and gotten the wrong point across – I apologise. I wasn’t trying to endorse the splurge of $50m by any means and I did talk about Citi requiring to exercise better discretion. I only wanted to quantify other examples of corporate greed.
But content submitted over the web is like the bullet fired off a gun – nothing can be done about it.
P.S. If you are still interested I can get you the Enron figures.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
No, we’ve had our fill of the Enron & Worldcom (wonder if you remember those clowns) shenanigans thanks to the pages of WSJ.
Enron Chairman Ken Lay is six feet under & the CEO Jeffrey Skilling is a full-time resident of the Taxpayer’s Motel (i.e. the U.S. Prison system).
BTW, wonder if you recollect the role Enron played in energy price manipulation & the brownouts in California around 2000-2001.
BTW, wonder if you recollect the role Enron played in energy price manipulation & the brownouts in California around 2000-2001.
I was a resident of UK at that time, so I did not experience this first-hand. However the book I mentioned (it was also made into a movie) talks about the whole scandal in great detail and that includes the CA brownouts, Dahbol and everything else that Enron muddied.