At least good news for taxpayers... CitiGroup has backed out of talks for Wachovia leaving the entire deal for Wells Fargo. I'm guessing that after more of the depth of bad debt came to light, it became more and more obvious that the deal just was not longer going to be in the best interest of CitiGroup's stockholders.
That was the good news, as long as...
All right, perhaps panic is too strong a word, but my goodness, it certainly does feel like one. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 5% today and is now down 30% since January 1. The S&P 500 is down 33.7% year to date and the NASDAQ is off 35.6%. This is indeed a bear market, but there is nothing rational about it whatsoever.
The sell off appears to be about nervousness investors are feeling about the future, the global economy, the bailout, corporate earnings. I try to keep a cool head, but the Dow is down 800 points in two days and even I wonder where it's going to end. Then I remember what Warren Buffet said...
Well, we all wanted a town hall (actually, we wanted a bunch of them), so here we are.
What should we expect?
First of all, here at TCR, we plan to have live blogging once again. I'm hoping that CoverItLive has their act together this time. I never heard back from them after Thursday night's debacle, and I really don't want to through that again. Regardless, join us here Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern as we bring you analysis as it happens.
With regard to content, I'm not sure what to expect with the audience and questions. Lynn Sweet from the Sun-Times tells us:
After a weekend of back and forth, one judge's order to stop Wells and Wachovia from proceeding on Saturday, and appellate court overturning that order on Sunday, and a $60 Million CitiGroup (C) suit against both Wells Fargo (WFC) and Wachovia (WB), the three parties have agreed to a temporary halt to all litigation and discovery until Wednesday at noon.
Which just demonstrates the fallout that can be expected as the government (in this case, the FDIC) strong-arms companies to act, no matter how imprudently, to prevent the government from stepping in and (in this case) taking yet another bank into receivership.
