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Citi bough rights to naming of the field because they believed, presumably, that the marketing value of having their name on the stadium would be valuable to the company. Given how prevalent this practice has become, this seems a fairly safe conclusion, though investing in poorly understood CDO's was also prevalent, so maybe not. But still it seems that their need to market and establish a brand does not change in the slightest if we're giving them $300 billion. Presumably, given the hit they are taking in even being named as a bailout victim, they will need to work that much harder to have a good brand. Lord knows I wouldn't put a dime into Citi.
What should really concern people is that one of Citi's more immediate reactions to their problems was to send out a notice to a number of their card holders. The notice advised people that their interest rates would be increased and that if they opted out of the increase, their credit cards would be canceled at their expiration date. Specifically:
If you opt out of these charges, you may use your account under the current terms until the end of your current membership year or the expiration date on your card, whichever is later. We will close your account at that time. You must then repay the balance under the current terms.
So let's say you have a Citi credit card with a balance on it. You've been paying on that balance for some time at whatever rate you had up until now. If you opt out, then you have to pay off that balance by the time the card expires. If you don't opt out, you'll pay a higher interest on the balance. Nice, eh?
Right now, the problem that we're theoretically trying to deal with is a credit crunch. If we give Citi $300 billion and then they increase loan rates, how is that helping matters? Short answer: it's not.
The worse part that nobody's talking about is that while we're bailing out these too big to fail organizations, we're not addressing the fundamental problem that they are STILL too big to fail. If you're the CEO of Goldman, or Citi, or Chase, or any of these other big banks, you now have Carte Blanche. You can feel free to take any crazy risk you want because you know full well that the government will bail you out. We might not have had a moral hazard situation before, but we DEFINITELY have one now.
Citi Field is the least of our problems right now.
