Economic Glance
The US government has seized control of Citigroup's staff Christmas party budget and set tight restrictions on the use of its corporate jet in exchange for its $45bn (£28bn) bail-out.
The measures are among a raft of restrictions on expenses detailed in the small print of filing made by Citi on New Year's Eve with the US financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In a memo to staff, Pandit said he and the chairman, Sir Win Bischoff, would forgo year-end bonuses for 2008 after the huge banking group lost three-quarters of its market value and was forced to go cap in hand to the treasury.
It wasn't 1929, but like that infamous year, 2008 is sure to be remembered by economic historians as one unlike any other.
But academic economists are. And with very few exceptions, they did not predict the crisis, either. Some warned of a housing bubble, but almost none foresaw the resulting cataclysm. An entire field of experts dedicated to studying the behavior of markets failed to anticipate what may prove to be the biggest economic collapse of our lifetime. And now that we are in the middle of it, many frankly admit that they are not sure how to prevent things from getting worse.
Think you could borrow money from a bank without saying what you were going to do with it? Well, apparently when banks borrow from you they don't feel the same need to say how the money is spent.
Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of homeownership, Mr. Bush is leaving office, as he himself said recently, “faced with the prospect of a global meltdown” with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed. 
