Citi ATM Fees Can Buy You 1.6 Common Shares
A: Hat Tip to Johnny for pointing out. Quite a statistic huh? With Citibank charging $3 for ATM fees at their E 86th / Lexington branch, I could have purchase 1.6 shares of the glamorous Citigroup common stock instead - although I think the end result would be the same. Quite telling isn't it. Citigroup common stock is trading as if the company will be nationalized, and is basically a call option right now. At $1.90/share, the fee they charged me to take my money out of their amazing, technically superior ATM machine, could have been spent purchasing 1.6 shares of the common stock!
Just do it already! The market knows it already. Do it while its almost fully priced in, lets open up limit down on Monday, take the global selloff medicine, get it past us, and move on! Don't do it half-way! Destroy the common and preferred, and give a haircut to bondholders. Get rid of management, selloff/writedown bad assets, restructure, and lets move on! Hurt those who took risks on their investments.
Barry Ritholtz has a LIST showing those in favor of nationalization.
The problem is I'm not sure you can just do one, without dragging down the remaining 3 big boys (Bank of America, Wells, and JP Morgan). So, what makes this so complicated is what do they do with all four and the consequences of a credit event on CDS counterparties exposed to those holding insurance on these guys. How will market react? Will it destroy the system or be a Black Monday that we can recover from? Will it cause runs on other banks?
I feel like we are all waiting for this to just happen already!
Comments (11)
Going to open houses in Brooklyn Heights,
needed cash, saw a Chase 3 blocks away.
doors locked, no access to atm
Citibank next door, screen says $3 charge
wtf, took my money.
A week later, got my Chase statement
Chase charged me $4 for the Citi withdrawal
$2 for the inquiry, $2 to give Citi my money
$So, $7 to withdraw $200.
Posted by jmgjag | February 20, 2009 3:10 PM
damn, thats like 3.7 shares of stock! My guess is they need money!
Posted by Noah | February 20, 2009 3:16 PM
Well with 20 or so minutes to go Citigroup is again below $2 despite the White House press secretary assuring us there is no nationalization coming. I am not buying it or any real estate for that matter. To date nothing the government has done will temper the white collar recession(depression?) hitting NYC. Instead the demonization and salary caps of wall streeters only hurts NYC's economy further. Although Bloomberg is offering to re-train layed off financial people. As what, construction workers? I agree Noah we need a very black Monday.
Posted by cfranch | February 20, 2009 3:42 PM
cfranch, I think you had mentioned a while back on a previous topic that you had countered your building's leasing office 5% rent increase with a 25% discount + 2 gym memberships.
How did they end up responding?
Posted by joenyc | February 20, 2009 4:17 PM
They finally got back to me yesterday and we have played phone tag since. will post when I hear and in the meantime have lots of apts saved at streeteasy.com
Posted by cfranch | February 20, 2009 4:22 PM
isn't this amazing!! if I remember corectly didn't we just give citi a huge bail out? and they are still failing? I agree let citi go, it looks like its already gone we are just propping it up
Posted by MIR | February 21, 2009 12:05 PM
Let's remember what brought a lot of these banks to their knees - proprietary trading. They should never have been allowed to gamble so much of their money, levered 30 or 40 to 1, while at the same time providing crucial functions to the world economy. I suppose it is feasible that Citi be allowed to go bankrupt in an orderly way, but if the plug were just pulled a la Lehman, it would be catastrophic. Citi moves a great chunk of the world's money, underwrites debt issuances few other banks can, provides transactional services to thousands of institutions, and on and on. They need to go back to being a bank, and they will - I don't think allowing them to fail is an option, but we are in a brave new world so who knows.
Posted by OT | February 22, 2009 12:06 AM
This is the REAL issue for the world to deal with next. Pretty sobering stuff:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/4623525/Failure-to-save-East-Europe-will-lead-to-worldwide-meltdown.html
Posted by Eastvillboy | February 22, 2009 11:00 PM
Here's the URL again:
http://tinyurl.com/aavxj6
Posted by Eastvillboy | February 22, 2009 11:31 PM
thanks for the tip Noah!!
Posted by johnny | February 23, 2009 4:54 PM
to joenyc:
finally heard back from the leasing office. i live in a full service luxury tower in hell's kitchen. "rebecca" called friday pretending that nothing had transpired since they sent me a lease. i reminded her i had countered with an offer. she put me on hold to "take another call". i was on hold for quite some time(i think she was speaking with her manager). she said she had sent me an email offering 10% off my current rent. i received no such email. the dishonesty and careless lying that permeates so much of the real estate industry is definitely worth an article by noah. i told her that i had seen better apts in rival buildings that were much more competitive. she again put me on hold to "take another call". she said she could not match those offers. i thanked her for her time and told her the building may want to paint the apartment before showing it. she got a bit snippy with me and told me "we will have it rented before we have time to paint it". good luck with that. on my way out that day i spoke with 2 of my doormen about how full the building is and how busy the leasing office is. they told me prospective renters are few and far between and that many other tenants were questioning them along the same lines. as we enter prime rental season, many leases are about to expire in this and many buildings across the city. i have over 80 apts saved on streeteasy.com and expect to add quite a few more. one more anecdote. i have a patient who handles rentals for citihabitats. i assumed he would be very busy this rental season as many people are looking to trade up to a nice apartment for less rent. he said things are dead. he spends most of his time accepting reviewing new listings. people who are not renewing leases are leaving new york.
Posted by cfranch | March 1, 2009 11:11 AM