During the Wall Street meltdown and subsequent financial crisis, the government took unprecedented steps buying toxic assets and bailing out hundreds of banks, lenders and other companies.
Among the interventions, government assumed an ownership stake in the financial giant Citigroup. The U.S. Treasury made two separate multibillion-dollar bailouts of Citigroup in 2008 and 2009, ultimately arriving at a 7.7 billion shares (or 36 percent) stake in the company.
The Treasury Department announced on Monday that it was planning to sell its huge chunk of Citigroup back to the open market. And to help with the sale of Citigroup, Treasury has hired the investment bank Morgan Stanley as an advisor. According to the New York Times, Morgan Stanley stands to profit between $23 and $135 million from the deal.
To summarize, our government spent billions of dollars to bail out one investment bank and now is going to pay a separate investment bank tens of millions of dollars to unwind that bailout. First taxpayers bailed out Wall Street – now taxpayers are paying its fees.
