The Week

One bridge to nowhere is an embarrassment; a thousand bridges to nowhere are a “fiscal stimulus.”

“It’s a lot easier to get into these situations than it is to get out of them,” says Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit about his ailing bank’s real-estate portfolio. Taxpayers are no doubt feeling the same way about the ongoing federal operation to prop up the banking system with their money, a project now $45 billion deeper into the hole with aid to Citigroup. Citigroup is politically connected: Robert Rubin, Treasury secretary under Clinton and a mentor both to current Treasury boss Henry Paulson and to Obama Treasury nominee Timothy Geithner, serves on the board. And while Citigroup shareholders have been racked-their investments have lost 80 percent of their value this year-Citigroup’s management inexplicably survives, the financial equivalent of those hardy post-nuclear cockroaches of Cold War lore. This is surely not the right outcome, and Messrs. Pandit and Rubin, among others, should be gotten out of their situations post haste. Meanwhile, HSBC, the London-based bank, wants to acquire the best of Citigroup’s assets. Better them than us.

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One bridge to nowhere is an embarrassment; a thousand bridges to nowhere are a “fiscal stimulus.”

“It’s a lot easier to get into these situations than it is to get out of them,” says Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit about his ailing bank’s real-estate portfolio. Taxpayers are no doubt feeling the same way about the ongoing federal operation to prop up the banking system with their money, a project now $45 billion deeper into the hole with aid to Citigroup. Citigroup is politically connected: Robert Rubin, Treasury secretary under Clinton and a mentor both to current Treasury boss Henry Paulson and to Obama Treasury nominee Timothy Geithner, serves on the board. And while Citigroup shareholders have been racked-their investments have lost 80 percent of their value this year-Citigroup’s management inexplicably survives, the financial equivalent of those hardy post-nuclear cockroaches of Cold War lore. This is surely not the right outcome, and Messrs. Pandit and Rubin, among others, should be gotten out of their situations post haste. Meanwhile, HSBC, the London-based bank, wants to acquire the best of Citigroup’s assets. Better them than us.