Congratulations, America! You just bought more of a failing company:
In its most daring bid yet to stabilize Citigroup, one of the nation’s largest and most troubled financial institutions, the Treasury Department announced on Friday that it would vastly increase its ownership of the struggling company.
After two multibillion-dollar lifelines failed to shore up Citigroup, the government will increase its stake in the company to 36 percent from 8 percent.
Meanwhile, this:
Credit-card companies continue to raise customer interest rates and fees despite a record-low target rate from the Federal Reserve and billions of dollars in bailout money that has been pumped in to the financial companies.
Though the Federal Reserve in December slashed its target rate to a range of between 0% and 0.25%, and a cut at the Fed usually means a drop in credit-card rates as well, many credit-card customers are instead seeing increases as companies try to offset increased losses in their card operations.
Just nationalize them and get this over with sooner rather than later.