{"id":196602,"date":"2008-04-09T17:55:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-09T22:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/04\/09\/an-update-on-the-citi-debt-sale\/"},"modified":"2008-04-09T17:55:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-09T22:55:00","slug":"an-update-on-the-citi-debt-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/04\/09\/an-update-on-the-citi-debt-sale\/","title":{"rendered":"An Update on the Citi Debt Sale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my economics update, I mentioned that Citi was selling about $12 billion in loans to private equity firms at a loss.<\/p>\n<p>Well, I did nor realize the potential significance, but on the way to pick up a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.insiderpages.com\/b\/3715782941\">Mama Leah&#8217;s pizza<\/a><sup>*<\/sup> (deep dish), I heard heard listening to the radio, and they were giving high 5s about it on <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Marketplace<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>They think that it might presage an unfreezing of the credit markets, because the banks have <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">finally<\/span> been able to sell some of that illiquid paper, though in this case it looks like Citi will be getting somewhat less than 90\u00a2 on the dollar.<\/p>\n<p>While Citi took the proverbial haircut on this, that is still better than what it was previously listed at on their balance sheet.<\/p>\n<p>Only on Wall Street is a loss of somewhere in the neighborhood of $1\u00bd <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">billion<\/span> considered good news.<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I think that mortgage backed paper is still too uncertain, and there are so many balls in the air as a function of the extraordinary levels of leverage that it does not mean much.<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;m a bear by inclination, and my record on predictions sucks like a thousand Hoovers all going at once.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:85%;\">Best Kosher &#8216;Za in Ballmur.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my economics update, I mentioned that Citi was selling about $12 billion in loans to private equity firms at a loss. Well, I did nor realize the potential significance, but on the way to pick up a Mama Leah&#8217;s pizza* (deep dish), I heard heard listening to the radio, and they were giving high &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1004],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196602"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}