Jules: You sendin’ The Wolf?
Marsellus: Feel better?
Jules: Shit Negro, that’s all you had to say.
Rick Stuckey is the Winston Wolf of the financial world, screeching into problem
areas and cleaning them up with great professionalism and no panicking. He managed
the LTCM fiasco, and now he’s been put
in charge of Citigroup’s subprime portfolio.
Which is all well and good, but I think that if Bob Rubin and Win Bischoff
were really serious about washing out these stables, they would have given Stuckey
more than just $43
billion in subprime-backed assets. After all, Citi’s mark-to-model portfolio
now totals $135 billion, an increase of $40 billion in just three months, and
I doubt that the problems in it are confined entirely to subprime. Are there
securities in there backed by option-ARM prime mortgages, or commercial real
estate lending? Are there bridge-equity lines, or impossible-to-sell loans to
private-equity shops? Citi isn’t saying, and it seems that they’re discouraging
Stuckey from even asking.
If you’re sending in The Wolf, you want him to deal with everything, not
just the worst of the mess.