Is Citibank Dead?

I have been turning over the possibility of trying an Al-Waleed move into Citigroup. The stock closed at $2.59 last week; next Friday is the earnings report.

But is Citigroup even a going concern?

Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase have all recovered significantly from their February lows and are trading well above their one-year average. Not Citi. Its stock keeps going down in a trajectory that reminds me of GM's.

The U.S. government will become Citigroup's biggest shareholder in September. Regulators are already telling Chairman Vikram Pandit how to do his job, through snarky critiques leaked to the media. Pandit doesn't want to lend to tapped-out, recession-plagued U.S. consumers; he wants to make money overseas. Sounds like a decent strategy; but the FDIC, according to an anonymously sourced Bloomberg story, wants Citi to keep the money at home, for political reasons.

One might envision the end of the Citi tale as a happy German-style labor-government-capital partnership. More likely, it is a post-capitalist story that doesn't end with a fairy-tale prince, Al-Waleed or otherwise.