Plane hypocrisy and pseudo capitalism

News broke this morning that Citi Group , despite all of its troubles, has decided to move forward on the purchase of a brand new $50,000,000.00 private jet. This is the same company who a few months ago was on the brink of collapse; the same company who in the last two years (Jan 2007-Jan 2009) has seen its stock price go from roughly $55/share to $3/share; the same company who has already squandered roughly $45,000,000,000.00 in government bailout money. Look at all those zeros, both in the dollar amounts and in leadership of the distressed bank. Certainly no one can question Vikram Pandit's intellect (he has PhD in Finance from Columbia), however we can and should question his judgment.

In the face of a global economic crisis the level of which we have not seen since The Great Depression could anyone make an argument for spending $50,000,000.00 on a private jet?? Especially by a company who is "on the dole"?? Why is that banks only rally around the cries of free enterprise and de-regulation in boom times, but are always the first ones in line with their hands out when things go bad? They throw around terms like "systemic risk" in order to gain entrance in to the federal reserve , line their pockets with cash from the government coffers and go on to spend like drunken sailors. And yet somehow no one holds them accountable. How is it possible that to date we have no accounting as to where 45,000,000,000.00 dollars of tax payers money has gone? Well I guess after today we may only need to know where 44,950,000,000.00 has gone.

Wall Street and corporations like Citi are the penulitamte in hyporcisy. They are pseudo-capitalists if you will. It is as if the mission statement of the company is "privatize gains, socialize losses"; and I for one am sick of it.

They are that friend/person we all know, who happily lives off unemployment and uses that money to go on vacation or buy a new car. If Mr. Pandit thought the acquistion of such a lavish mode of transportation was necessary for the continued success of Citi (I almost got through that without laughing), then maybe he should have picked up the tab himself. After all during the boom times Pandit has made hundreds of millions of dollars, the only problem is that would fly in the face of the aforementioned mission statement. It appears we have turned a famous phrase on its head, today it is "ask not what you can do for your country but what your country can do for you. ". And so we continue, feeding the crocodile......