Citibank Loses a Ton of Cash

Its no secret that any public company in finance or with an obscure financial offshoot (I’m looking at you, Woolworth’s Credit Card division) is getting it hard right now. But its even sadder that with all the hype surrounding the credit crisis for the past 6 months, that this:

The bank on Sunday said it expected it might have to record losses of between $US8 billion ($8.7 billion) and $US11 billion in the current quarter, which was likely to wipe out net profit for this period.

Isn’t nearly as surprising to me as:

ONE day after the departure of chief executive Charles Prince, Citigroup officials say it will take the bank until the middle of next year to clean up problems caused by credit market turmoil.

The fact that someone has the name “Charles Prince”. You’re right, I should be more mature about this. But that will probably lead to depression, which will turn me into another “consumer pessimist“, which isn’t going to help the economy either!