Reaction to the bailout
The consensus is that the Citigroup bailout was bad - see Mark Thoma.
I am going to differ here. The bailout was well designed...
except
1). The Government should have taken a much larger fee - at least 20 percent ownership of Citigroup - and arguably more. Shareholders should be punished.
2). The attachment point of the excess of loss policy is too low. If the attachment point had been 80 billion Citigroup would survive. There was no need for a 40 billion dollar attachment point.
The problem with the bailout was not the design - it was the amount extracted from Citigroup shareholders. The government took too much risk for too little reward.
I am surprised that the shareholders were not effectively wiped out as per Fannie, Freddie, AIG.
Not displeased - but somewhere I wish the government would get a happy medium somewhere - rather than one rule Citigroup and one rule for Fannie.
John Hempton