It’s difficult to imagine a world without Citigroup (Citibank, Citi Cards, Citi Mortgage, Primerica, etc.), but with their stock closing down another 26.41% today, to close at $4.71 (C), it’s also difficult, in these troubled financial times, to imagine a scenario that allows Citigroup to continue operations going in the direction that they are.  Once the largest bank in the United States, Citigroup’s assets and market value have fallen over 65% in November alone.  As if that isn’t bad enough, the word on the street is that government intervention or outside investment may be necessary for their survival – which is basically the kiss of death in this market.

The biggest problem here today is that Citigroup has both a liquidity and solvency issue.  Thy’re working to calm their investors, but the market is already so shell-shocked from the other failures to date that these reassurances are falling on deaf ears.  In retrospect, it’s easy to see how big a blow losing the bid for Wachovia was and following that with an announcement announcing the elimaination of 52,000 jobs worldwide compounded the problem from a public relations standpoint.

With all the backlash surrounding the Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo, it seemed only a matter of time before Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang was foreced out.  There’s also the 60% decrease in Yahoo’s value since Yang took over last year, but It’s questionable what percentage of that is attributable to Yang and what percentage is attributable to the market drop as a whole.  Regardless, I have to imagine that the board and employees of Yahoo are secretly (or maybe publicly) celebrating his departure and hoping that the market sees this as a new hope for the future of Yahoo.