What to do with Citi? This is now a taxpayer issue. Citi took $25 billion in TARP funds in October. A month later,  it took another $20 billion from the government, plus government guarantees on $300 billion of assets on its books. And after all that, it looks like the bank may be in line for more TARP funds on the heels of Bank of America's $20 billion injection. You have to wonder if more strings will be attached this time.

All this is occurring as Citi undertakes a mission to sell enough assets so that is can stay in two main business lines, retail and corporate banking. The word now is that Citi may be ready to spin off a third of the company, its major U.S. consumer finance operations, into a "non-core" unit, a bad bank as it were. At some point you have to wonder if it would be best for the government to engineer a sale of all assets and basically put the bank out of its misery. You can only muddle on for so long before its pointless. Many assume that the economy will worsen before it gets better.

For more:
- here's the Forbes article

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