Brilliant!

Under pressure from the "Pay Czar" Ken Feinberg, Citigroup sold Phibro LLC, an energy trading business. Why did they sell this? Well, Andrew Hall, a star trader was likely to make $100m this year after having made $98.9m in 2008. This was politically unacceptable give the degree to which Citigroup had benefitted from bailout money. So, to eliminate this "optical" problem, Citi sold Phibro to Occidential Petroleum for $250 million. According to the Wall Street Journal, Phibro earned $1.86 billion dollars over the past five years. Using the average of the last 5 years,  Phibro was sold for 67% of earnings. How much sense does this make? In the spirit of political correctness (having to pay a trader $100m for generating substantial gains for his employer), Citi sells the business for a song (67% of earnings - in other words, .67x earnings) when the average company in the S&P 500 trades for 17 times earnings. This is an example how government makes idiotic decisions when the focus is not on "what is the best use of taxpayer money," rather than, which decision is going to make me more popular with the largest share of potential voters. Idiot!