If you listen to the media today, the bailout of Citigroup is a huge success and the stock market is being rewarded for effective, decisive action.  If you listen to me, there is no justification for what happened in the market today and buyers and sellers are irrationally grabbing at whatever news they can.  Tomorrow will show that in all reality it’s only a matter of time before something else dips and the market tumbles again.  But, there is good news amidst the gloom and that is the surge in Citi stock up nearly 60% to close at $5.95 – much more realistic for a company the size of Citigroup, even with their problems.

Even with the bailout of Citi on the books now, it doesn’t appear that the auto-makers are any closer to getting their due share, which seems odd to me.  I hope this proves to simply be posturing by the government as this to me still seems bigger and more important than the likes of AIG.  The only difference, of course, being that most politicians don’t care who is in Detroit, but their buddies on Wall Street are a whole different story.

When did it become okay to go to the government bailout line the minute business got bad? In the past, make a bad business decision, pay the price, which might even mean closing doors.  With modern day economics, some would lead us to believe that there are companies out there too big to fail.

Some of you still remember the internet bubble and subsequent popping of that bubble almost a decade ago.  My own company closed its doors after some of our “new economy” customers lost their funding, resulting in non-payment on millions of dollars already spent on web development.  We paid our employees and vendors the old fashioned way – we sold assets, clients, and took second jobs to make sure that we paid every dime owed.  Ultimately, we closed our doors, but not one vendor was left without payment or a guarantee of payment.  That’s how business used to be done.  It never once occurred to us to ask the government to bail us out of our problems, and I don’t remember any other company getting a bailout either.