Wikinvest Wire

Quote of the day

Monday, June 23, 2008

Commenting on the upcoming round of layoffs at Citigroup that will see some 6,500 investment bank employees lose their jobs, John Havens, head of the company's institutional-clients group (which includes the investment bank) noted:

Some of the investment bank's businesses have been rendered obsolete by the credit crunch.
What an interesting word choice in "obsolete" - as if the investment bank's mortgage and derivative products were at one point "useful".

1 comments:

Nick said...

It's a little disingenuous to say they weren't useful at some point. In fact, I'm sure they were very useful at inflating the bank's profits through leveraging, speculation, and providing financing for leveraging and speculation. You could quibble with who those services are most useful for, but it's hard to argue with the billions of dollars the IB's made during the bubble, and the billions of dollars their executives are walking away with from compensation and severance packages for their stellar job boosting bottom lines by creating and fueling the bubble. It's not like they're going to be around to be accountable for cleaning up the mess; I'd say their business model was very useful for the executives and insiders who played the system at the expense of the people.

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