Citi's New Slogan Plays Well With Insomniacs

Vikram Pandit is relatively new to his position as CEO of Citigroup - the supermarket of financial services - but he's absolutely killin' it so far.

Citi was never an easy ship to take the controls of. Between getting called out by hot babes and recording two consecutive quarterly losses due to suffering billions of dollars in writedowns, its shares have fallen nearly 55% in the last year.

But Vikram, who always appears to be smiling and looking so impishly whimsical, has buckled down and done some serious work. Not all of it sounds great, but it's work nonetheless.

One of the first piece of business Vik got around to was instituting a new slogan for the Citi brand. Playing off that old cliché that New York is the city that never sleeps, all commercials for the big bank will now end with 'Citi. . .never sleeps'.

The Wall Street Journal released an early copy of the new Citi commercials, but DealBreaker's version feels so much more fitting for the bank everyone is becoming tired of:


Citi New Slogan - Watch more free videos

The next thing Vik came up with was to aggressively prune Citi's balance sheets. The Financial Times reports:

Mr Pandit is thought likely to announce up to $15bn in reductions in Citi's operating expense budget, which stood at $61.5bn at the end of last year.

Cuts are expected to come from a radical overhaul of the company's sprawling information technology systems as well as from job losses.

Aw hell yeah, Vik! Coming in blastin' with some serious firings, are we? Now who's smiling, right? Many news sources are predicting that this 'lightening of the load' at Citi is the only good route they can go.

But now with all those insomniac slogans, those employees keeping their jobs will have a reason to stay late and work.



FT: Citi to identify $400bn of potential disposals, May 9, 2008

DealBreaker: Citi Never Sleeps: The Ad Campaign, May 7, 2008

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Would You Rather Have a Mansion Abroad or a Crappy Apartment in the U.S.?

The housing market in the United States is in shambles, but looking at some of these comparisons will definitely make you want to buy elsewhere.

Take for example, the beautiful Stratford Castle in South Africa. You can buy this thing for $500,000 and reenact all your favorite Lord of the Rings scenes everyday. The castle comes with stained glass windows and a great proximity to a beautiful lake and golf course.

Compare that to what you might find for $500k in the San Francisco market and you're looking for a big disappointment. Hippies everywhere, pretentious neighbors, tiny apartment, all for the same price.

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Now we travel to Europe where everyone's favorite, the French, are offering a jewel of a chateau in a quiet town with 5 bedrooms, sauna, swimming pool, and gardens. Plus all the frog legs you can eat for that same $500,000.

Compare that to the Downey neighborhood of Los Angeles, where you can get what appears to be an old crack house with some serious landscaping issues. Jennifer Lopez's nanny dated a guy in the 80s who lived here!


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In the Ukraine you can use $1.8 Million to buy this sweet medieval castle. It's gotta have all sorts of crazy torture chambers, Soviet riches, and Siberian babes in it somewhere. Try not to use them all at once.

Compare that to mutha effen New York City where $1.8 Mil gets you a little converted 2-bedroom in Chelsea. The thing was probably an industrial revolution-era factory not more than 10 years ago. But now it's close to Penn Station and you can barely fit your twin-sized bed in it.


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Let's not forget that South Africa, the Ukraine, and France, might not be your ideal places to live. Even though you bought yourself a cheap house, all those dollars you saved will disappear when you start converting your money into Euros.

Plus South Africa is hosting the next World Cup in 2010, are you sure you want soccer hooligan nonsense all over your doorstep?


via [DivineCaroline] +photos

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The Funny and Money Friday Daily Links

This is the sexiest video on "peak oil" that I've ever seen and an interesting way to deliver an "educational" video.

News Corp is making all the right moves to be a front runner on the internet and they're willing to use all their assets to do it

Looks like the $500 million opening week of GTA IV wasn't enough to hold off a hostile takeover attempt from EA. Should be interesting.

A little more discussion on buying VIX calls at the Daily Options Report

Don't get me wrong , I love John Stewart, but this shows how stupid people in our country can be. His show is named "most trusted " news source

Internet millionaire throws the nicest 29th birthday party ever

Ebay is going to hell. Their are so many scammers it is impossible to sell a laptop anymore. Every time you put up an auction you get 50 questions from "ebay users" trying to hack your account.

Pocket Change goes to Chetah's and takes a look at the world's most expensive nude sushi

Economic stimulus check burned for warmth

I love this story of courage and perseverance. Somehow Zachary Feinstein got on the NBA draft list despite never having played basketball and is a 5' 8' white guy. Ok this story has no courage or perseverance but is funny as hell. He'll probably sign for league minimum

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A Rebuttal to 'What Makes Beer Go Bad'

In the interest of full-disclosure, the genuine Anheuser-Busch BREWMASTER himself, George Reisch, contacted us here at Wall Street Fighter about Tuesday's post on what makes a good beer go so bad.

The third generation brewmaster/home brewer has a few points of clarification to make on our very glib, yet entirely grammatically correct post.

George's comments in red:



1. Bottles of beer kept in a glass-door cooler are slowly being skunked by light. Beer is like a vampire that craves darkness. True, especially if the bottles are right against the light versus the bottles on the shelf below "in the shade".





2. Beer can get skunked from being in less than 10 seconds of direct sunlight. True, IF using whole hops or pellets AND the beer is in a clear beer bottle or glass. If in a can or aluminum bottle (where the sunlight is blocked) only the light entering through the opening affects the beer. Green and clear bottles containing beer that uses whole hops or pellets will also become light-struck in seconds. If in a brown bottle, the beer will not become light-struck in the normal time it takes to drink the beer. However, even the beer in brown bottles will become light-struck over several days.





3. Brown bottles offer the best protection, while green and clear bottles are not good protection from light. Miller uses hops that are more resistant to light than most beers. (Good call, Miller) Though there’s no such thing as “hops” that are more resistant to light, it is true that SABMiller, Anheuser-Busch, MolsonCoors and other major brewers use light-stable hop extracts in most beers packaged in clear glass bottles to prevent the light-struck note and preserve the beer’s shelf life.





4. Chilling and warming beer does not effect it. (Hard to believe, right?) It goes through so many different heating and warming processes that you wouldn't notice a change in taste unless you chilled and warmed it everyday for a month. Beer has a "freshness timer" that goes faster at higher temperatures. If your beer is allowed to warm up, the "aging timer" goes faster and the beer becomes stale. Therefore, if you keep your beer as cold as possible from the moment you buy it and take it home (without freezing it), it will stay fresher longer.





5. Freezing beer makes it taste better, but exposing beer to extreme heat can lead to a gross frothy taste. (This one is kind of obvious. Why would you put a beer in an oven?) Not true. Freezing beer makes beer taste softer and duller and also produces a haze in the beer. Ice beers are brewed and fermented differently in order to accommodate freezing the beer late in the process, rethawing it, and filtering it. (In essence, Ice Beers are brewed, fermented, and aged so as to taste great when frozen,thawed, and filtered). As stated above, heat speeds up staling (oxidation) of beer and should be avoided at all costs.





6. Beer won't spoil like milk, so don't worry about those 'born on dates' too much. It's still drinkable after 110 days. Although the taste of every brand of beer will vary over time, in general during the summer months, if you store bottles of the same beer brand from the same case in the refrigerator, inside your home at your "living temp", or in the garage or trunk of your car (very hot in the summer), you will find each storage temperature tastes different than the others in just a matter of days. Remember that three things are bad for beer: "heat", "air" inside the closed package, and "light". The brewer’s job is to remove the air from the packages (bottles, cans, and kegs) before filling with beer. The retailers and consumers should keep the beer appropriately stored (to guard against staling) and dark (to guard against light struck effects) until consuming. Though beer won’t “spoil,” it certainly will change in taste if not stored properly.





7. Beer with more than 7% alcohol gets better with age. In general, beers with higher alcohols are usually brewed to accommodate the higher alcohol level with a greater percentage of darker malted and unmalted grains and also more hops. They are frequently fermented at higher temperatures giving more fruity and winey notes. These higher alcohol beers also change – better or worse – with age, and the aged beer (although different than when tasted fresh) still has an interesting taste. On the contrary, delicate 4-5% ABV lager beers allowed to age in the package will show the harsh, woody, papery aroma and taste notes of staling to a greater degree and therefore should be consumed as fresh as possible. As stated earlier, if stored cold (without freezing the beer) these delicate lagers will stay fresh in taste for a longer period of time than if stored warmer.

Now that we're all fully versed in the latest anti-skunking techniques, let us all go out and make this the summer of beer. Keeping our beer as frugal as our checking accounts, without an ounce wasted.

Any other questions about beer you've always wondered about? Let us hear them in the comments section.

Portfolio: Defending Your Beer by Lew Bryson, May 2, 2008

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Biz Babes: Ivanka Trump

The Don's daughter is one of the premier babes in the business world.

Her father, the guy everyone wearing a tie thinks they can impersonate -the Donald Trump - made his billions in well executed real estate maneuvers. His 'Trump Tower' buildings have become landmarks in the many cityscapes stand out in. Although he disputes his Forbes net-worth estimate, he is still pretty high on the list as the 117th richest person in the world with $3.0 Billion.

None of that makes any difference to Ivanka though, because she claims she isn't some spoiled rich girl comparable to Paris Hilton. In an interview in 2007 she responded to those comparisons by saying:

“I work 13-hour days for my money,” the 25-year-old former model, who now works for dad Donald’s business, told the London Express. “I bought my house from my father — I have a mortgage, you know.”

And although I doubt Ivanka has a mortgage like many of the high-interest subprime mortgages most people in our country battle with monthly, I will give her credit for actually doing stuff.

She even attended an Ivy League School, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in real estate from UPenn's Wharton School of Business. Not something you can buy without having some modicum of intelligence.

Don't forget that she's gorgeous too. According to Chickipedia.com, Ivanka is 5'11", boasting measurements of 36 - 24 - 34. She was once a premier fashion model with Versace too, before going into the family real estate business.

Her Forbes.com profile lists her as:

26 years old and currently serving as a Class I Director of the Trump Organization Board since August 1, 2007. Ms. Trump is the Vice President of Development and Acquisitions of the Trump Organization LLC, a position she has held since September 2005. From September 2004 to September 2005, Ms. Trump was a Project Manager in the Retail Development division of Forest City Ratner Companies.

Ivanka is currently launching the Ivanka Trump Collection, any piece of which would make a ridiculously expensive gift of jewelry for your girlfriend. Better bust out one of these bad boys when you've really f'ed up.

Here's some other good news for anyone out there trying to decide which billionaire heiress businesswoman to stalk - Ivanka is great with creeps. Interested in getting down to business with Ivanka, let knows in the comments section. May she reads this site?



Chickipedia.com: Ivanka Trump

Forbes: Ivanka M Trump profile

MSNBC: I'm no Paris Hilton party girl, Feb 2007

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The 90s Finally Sellout

10 years ago, you could walk down the street and buy an old beat up guitar used by Kurt Cobain for $10,000 easily. Now good luck getting one for less than $100,000.

What happened to non-conformist Nirvana fans recently? Ironically, the've got plenty of money now. According to an article in Portfolio the Generation X buying blitz is on. Everything from collectible skateboards, 90s grunge flannels, mint condition Transformers, original Mac computers are hitting the auction block.

Now that the baby boomer generation has bought all the useless Beatles and Elvis crap up, it's the Brat-Pack kids and the Grunge Revolution's turn to take the wheel on eBay. I hope trapper-keepers are worth a lot in a few years, because I could make a killing off my collection.

One of the more surprising facts from the Portfolio piece is that stupid tools are also making their presence felt at the auction houses:

A pretty ordinary Led Zeppelin T-shirt went for $1,625. "Younger buyers might not even listen to Led Zeppelin," Lipman says, "but they want the T-shirts because they're cool."

I can't believe this guy actually thinks someone would buy a limited edition Led Zeppelin t-shirt without ever listening to their music. That kind of stuff just makes you sick. What about the guy who wiped his ass with those incredibly rare WWI stamps? Didn't that happen? Well even if it didn't, I'm sure it's a cause for concern.

In a stark contrast to all the hype over 80s and 90s nostalgia, it seems Marilyn Monroe is having a bit of a resurgence as well:

"For the last six years, Marilyn Monroe has been our biggest seller at auction," says Margaret Barrett, director of entertainment memorabilia at auction house Bonhams & Butterfields. "She died in 1962, so she's pre–baby boom. Yet she appeals to collectors in their twenties and seventies—male and female. Every generation seems to discover her."

Maybe they're just trying to 'discover' her secret sex tape. The guy who owns it now is gonna die sometime, and then Joe Francis is going to make it the lamest Girls Gone Wild video ever.


Portfolio: Reality's Bites, May 5, 2008

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Stimulus-Check Advertising Floods The Airwaves

I just heard a cringe-inducing Sears ad on the radio for new refrigerators. At the end of the ad the voice-over guy interjected, 'Sounds like a great way to spend those stimulus checks!'

Are you kidding me with these? I'm pretty sure spending your money on anything is 'a great way to spend' your stimulus check. Home Depot has also launched a campaign in the coming weeks to capitalize on all those much-anticiapted $600 checks. The thinking behind the Home Depot market grab is to take advantage of all those housing fears. Maybe if you add a new little 'breakfast nook' on your kitchen, you won't have to worry about all those foreclosures and homeowners unable to sell.

As we 'reported on' last week, Wal-Mart is very excited to cash in on some of that precious stimulation.I'm just hoping every local TV ad and mom and pop store doesn't come at me begging I 'use that stimulus check here!'

It's kind of like when you walk past a homeless guy begging for money, and you fake checking your pockets to tell him you don't have any money, but all that fake checking makes some change jangle around and then he's on to you. That's how I feel with all these stimulus ads. They know we're getting $600 in our pocket soon and we're supposed to increase consumer spending with it, for the good of the economy.

Of course it's a smart business plan to plant the association of those checks with a certain purchase through advertising. Even local community colleges classes are being pitched as the best investment you can make with those extra funds. An investment in your education. The underlying fear driving that effort is the one people have of losing their jobs and being unqualified for anything else.

I say spend your money where you usually do, and definitely pay off your debts first. Other than that, might I suggest purchasing two $300 pens? In case you lose one.


CNN Money: Smart Moves For Your Stimulus Check, April 28, 2008

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The Funny and Money Thursday Daily Links

What's is it like being an oil trader?

Did you know that the Fed has sold half of the nation's gold to keep gold prices down? That or they're trying to cash in.

EA has Zero percent chance of buying Rockstar now. Grand Theft Auto IV did $400 million in 5 days.

NBC aka NBC Universal aka GE plans to announce that SuperBowl ads will be $3 million per 30 seconds

Did you make some good money trading this week? Remember last week on The Office where Dwight bought a 2001 Xterra from Andy, flipped it, and then put it on ebay. Well it really is on Ebay now and I think you should buy it

While the rest of the states struggle, the government of Texas has a $10 billion surplus

Damn the BMW M1 looks fast. I have to add one of these to my collection.

You heard about the lives lost in the Cyclone but did you know it destroyed many of the regions top rice fields? Rice continues to fly. How much more do I have to tell you to get you to buy some rice options?

Plastic surgery is a super hot market and only getting hotter. Pretty soon Wal-Mart is going to have $4 facelifts

How to get a job in venture capital

I enjoy his site but I have a new drinking game. Get 4 bottles of whiskey and go to Tim's site. Each time you see the word "Tim" take a shot of whiskey and then see how long until you pass out.

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Disney Saves The World From Economic Peril

Many news sources are pissing themselves with joy over Disney's earnings announcement today, however should we really take this as a sign of a turnaround?

Many Wall Street analysts have been using Disney vacation sales as a key indicator for the current economic recession. The thinking behind it is, if Americans can afford a nice family vacation to Disney Land or Disney World, the economy must not be so bad after all.

Forget about all the inflation fears and sell offs occurring in the markets. If a couple of privileged kids get the chance to punch a life-size Mickey in the nuts, we're all in good shape.

Of course, the Disney brand has other sources of revenue besides amusement parks, including movie (Enchanted, No Country For Old Men) and television (ABC, ESPN) brands. According to a report in today's New York Times:

ABC Studios, which produces shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” fueled the rise in profit because it recorded lower production costs.

I think we all know where those lower production costs came from - the writer's strike. And that's obviously not a good thing. Just because the studio 'saved tons of money' airing reruns, doesn't mean it helped their business grow at all.

By that logic, failing to negotiate a multi-billion-dollar merger deal was good for the company because it saved money on all the paper it would have had to buy to sign the contracts. That's being 'eco-friendly' too.

Disney World itself seems to be hitting some recession problems as well. Recent statistics show that 40% of the animatronic dolls in the 'It's A Small World' ride, will be seeing disastrous foreclosures on their tiny properties. The 'Thailand doll' is also looking very malnourished due to unforeseen rice cost increases.


New York Times: No Signs of a Slowdown in Traffic at Disney's Parks, May 7, 2008

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